Bantu

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Map showing the approximate distribution of Bantu (dull yellow) vs. other Niger-Congo languages and  peoples (bright yellow).

Bantu is  a general term for over 400 different ethnic groups in Africa, from Cameroon to South Africa, united by a common language family (the Bantu languages) and  in many cases common  and  social sciences)">customs.

[edit] Definition

"Bantu" means "people" in many Bantu languages. Dr. Wilhelm Bleek first used the term "Bantu" in its current sense in his 1862 book A Comparative Grammar of South African Languages, in which he hypothesized that a vast number of languages located across central, southern, eastern, and  western Africa shared so many characteristics that they must be part of a single language group. This basic thesis is  still accepted by some people today, although the theory has been widely challenged since it  was proposed - not least because a language may be spread by a relatively small number of human carriers.

[edit] Origins

Before the Bantu, the southern half of Africa is  believed to have  been populated by Khoisan speaking people, today occupying the arid regions around the Kalahari and  a few isolated pockets in Tanzania. Pygmies inhabited central Africa, whereas Cushites and  other people speaking Afro-Asiatic languages inhabited north-eastern and  northern Africa. Northwestern Africa, the Sahara, and  the Sudan were inhabited by people speaking Mande and  Atlantic languages (such as the Fulani and  Wolof) and  other people speaking Nilo-Saharan languages.

There are  two basic theories of Bantu origins. The first was advanced by Joseph Greenberg in 1963. He had analyzed and  compared several hundred African languages and  found that a group of languages spoken in Southeastern Nigeria were the most closely related to languages from the Bantu group. He theorized that Proto-Bantu (the hypothetical ancestor of the Bantu languages) was originally one of these languages that spread south and  east over hundreds of years.

This was quickly challenged by Malcolm Guthrie who analyzed each Bantu language and  found that the most stereotypical were those spoken in Zambia and  in the southern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This provided the alternate theory that Bantu speakers had spread from this location in all directions.

[edit] Bantu expansion

One common hypothesis of the Bantu expansion

Some historians still accept a synthesis of the above named theories, although the enthusiasm with which the South African apartheid government exploited these ideas left them under something of a cloud.

The Bantu first originated around the Benue-Cross rivers area in southeastern Nigeria and  spread over Africa to the Zambia area. Sometime in the second millennium BC, perhaps triggered by the drying of the Sahara and  pressure from the migration of people from the Sahara into the region, they were forced to expand into the rainforests of central Africa (phase I). About 1000 years later they began a more  rapid second phase of expansion beyond the forests into southern and  eastern Africa. Then sometime in the first millennium new agricultural techniques and  plants were developed in Zambia, probably imported from South East Asia via Austronesian-speaking Madagascar. With these techniques another Bantu expansion occurred centered on this new location (phase III).

By about AD 1000 it  had reached modern day Zimbabwe and  South Africa. In Zimbabwe a major southern hemisphere empire was established, with its capital at Great Zimbabwe. it  controlled trading routes from South Africa to north of the Zambezi, trading gold, copper, precious stones, animal hides, ivory and  metal goods with the Arab traders of the Swahili coast. By the 14th or  15th centuries the Empire had surpassed its resources and  had collapsed, with the city of Great Zimbabwe being abandoned.

[edit] Bantu in South Africa

Main article: Bantu peoples of South Africa

Black South Africans were at times officially called "Bantus" by the apartheid regime. The term "Bantu" is  considered pejorative in South Africa.

[edit] See also

• Centre International des Civilisations Bantu
• Jan Vansina