Bantu peoples

Ethnolinguistic group in Africa

Ethnic group

Bantu

Approximate distribution of Bantu peoples divided into zones according to the Guthrie classification of Bantu languages

Total population
460 million
Regions with significant populations

* Central Africa
* Southern Africa
* East Africa
* Southeast Africa
* southern Somalia

Languages
Bantu languages (over 535)
Religion
Mostly Christianity (Catholic and Protestant)
Minorities: Islam and traditional Bantu religions

The Bantu peoples are an indigenous ethnolinguistic grouping of approximately 400 distinct native African ethnic groups who speak Bantu languages. The languages are native to countries spread over a vast area from West Africa, to Central Africa, Southeast Africa and into Southern Africa.Bantu people also inhabit southern areas of Northeast African states.[1][2]

There are several hundred Bantu languages. Depending on the definition of "language" or "dialect", it is estimated that there are between 440 and 680 distinct languages.[3] The total number of speakers is in the hundreds of millions, ranging at roughly 350 million in the mid-2010s (roughly 30% of the population of Africa, or roughly 5% of the total world population).[4] About 60 million speakers (2015), divided into some 200 ethnic or tribal groups, are found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo alone.

The larger of the individual Bantu groups have populations of several million, e.g.the large majority of West Africa, notably the most populous African nation Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Burundi (25 million), the Baganda[5] people of Uganda (5.5 million as of 2014), the Shona of Zimbabwe (17.6 million as of 2020), the Zulu of South Africa (14.2 million as of 2016[update]), the Luba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (28.8 million as of 2010[update]), the Sukuma of Tanzania (10.2 million as of 2016[update]), the Kikuyu of Kenya (8.1 million as of 2019[update]), the Xhosa people of Southern Africa (9.6 million as of 2011), and the Pedi of South Africa (7 million as of 2018).

## Etymology

[edit]

Further information: Bantu languages § Name

Map of the major Bantu languages shown within the Niger–Congo language family, with non-Bantu languages in greyscale.

Abantu is the Xhosa and Zulu word for people. It is the plural of the word 'umuntu', meaning 'person', and is based on the stem '--ntu', plus the plural prefix 'aba'.[6]

In linguistics, the word Bantu, for the language families and its speakers, is an artificial term based on the reconstructed Proto-Bantu term for "people" or "humans". It was first introduced into modern academia (as Bâ-ntu) by Wilhelm Bleek in 1857 or 1858 and popularised in his Comparative Grammar of 1862.[7] The name was said to be coined to represent the word for "people" in loosely reconstructed Proto-Bantu, from the plural noun class prefix *ba- categorizing "people", and the root *ntʊ̀ - "some (entity), any" (e.g. Xhosa umntu "person" abantu "people", Zulu umuntu "person", abantu "people").

There is no native term for the people who speak Bantu languages because they are not an ethnic group. People speaking Bantu languages refer to their languages by ethnic endonyms, which did not have an indigenous concept prior to European contact for the larger ethnolinguistic phylum named by 19th-century European linguists. Bleek's coinage was inspired by the anthropological observation of groups self-identifying as "people" or "the true people".[8] That is, idiomatically the reflexes of *bantʊ in the numerous languages often have connotations of personal character traits as encompassed under the values system of ubuntu, also known as hunhu in Chishona or botho in Sesotho, rather than just referring to all human beings.[9]

The root in Proto-Bantu is reconstructed as *-ntʊ́. Versions of the word Bantu (that is, the root plus the class 2 noun class prefix *ba-) occur in all Bantu languages: for example, as bantu in Kikongo, Kituba, Tshiluba and Kiluba; watu in Swahili; ŵanthu in Tumbuka; anthu in Chichewa; batu in Lingala; bato in Duala; abanto in Gusii; andũ in Kamba and Kikuyu; abantu in Kirundi, Lusoga, Zulu, Xhosa, Runyoro and Luganda; wandru in Shingazidja; abantru in Mpondo and Ndebele; bãthfu in Phuthi; bantfu in Swati and Bhaca; banhu in kisukuma; banu in Lala; vanhu in Shona and Tsonga; batho in Sesotho, Tswana and Sepedi; antu in Meru; andu in Embu; vandu in some Luhya dialects; vhathu in Venda and bhandu in Nyakyusa.

Within the fierce debate among linguists about the word "Bantu", Seidensticker (2024) indicates that there has been a "profound conceptual trend in which a "purely technical [term] without any non-linguistic connotations was transformed into a designation referring indiscriminately to language, culture, society, and race"."[10]

## History

[edit]

### Origins and expansion

[edit]

Main article: Bantu expansion

Bantu languages derive from the Proto-Bantu reconstructed language, estimated to have been spoken about 4,000 to 3,000 years ago in West/Central Africa (the area of modern-day Cameroon). They were supposedly spread across Central, East and Southern Africa in the so-called Bantu expansion, comparatively rapid dissemination taking roughly two millennia and dozens of human generations during the 1st millennium BC and the 1st millennium AD.[11]

### Bantu expansion

[edit]

Reconstructing the dispersal of Bantu-speaking populations.

Scientists from the Institut Pasteur and the CNRS, together with a broad international consortium, retraced the migratory routes of the Bantu populations, which were previously a source of debate. The scientists used data from a vast genomic analysis of more than 2,000 samples taken from individuals in 57 populations throughout Sub-Saharan Africa to trace the Bantu expansion. During a wave of expansion that began 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, Bantu-speaking populations – some 310 million people as of 2023 – gradually left their original homeland West-Central Africa and travelled to the eastern and southern regions of the African continent.[12][13]

During the Bantu expansion, Bantu-speaking peoples extirpated and displaced many earlier inhabitants, with only a few modern peoples such as Pygmy groups in Central Africa, the Hadza people in northern Tanzania, and various Khoisan populations across southern Africa remaining in existence into the era of European contact.[14] Archaeological evidence attests to their presence in areas subsequently occupied by Bantu speakers. Researchers have demonstrated that the Khoisan of the Kalahari are remnants of a huge ancestral population that may have been the most populous group on the planet prior to the Bantu expansion.[14] Biochemist Stephan Schuster of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and colleagues found that the Khoisan population began a drastic decline when the Bantu farmers spread through Africa 4,000 years ago.[14]

### Hypotheses of early Bantu expansion

[edit]

1 = 2000–1500 BC origin
2 = c. 1500 BC first dispersal
2.a = Eastern Bantu, 2.b = Western Bantu
3 = 1000–500 BC Urewe nucleus of Eastern Bantu
4–7 = southward advance
9 = 500 BC–0 Congo nucleus
10 = 0–1000 AD last phase[15][16][17]

Before the Bantu expansion had been definitively traced starting from their origins in the region between Cameroon and Nigeria,[18] two main scenarios of the Bantu expansion were hypothesized: an early expansion to Central Africa and a single origin of the dispersal radiating from there,[19] or an early separation into an eastward and a southward wave of dispersal, with one wave moving across the Congo Basin toward East Africa, and another moving south along the African coast and the Congo River system toward Angola.[20]

Genetic analysis shows a significant clustered variation of genetic traits among Bantu language speakers by region, suggesting admixture from prior local populations. Bantu speakers of South Africa (Xhosa, Venda) showed substantial levels of the SAK and Western African Bantu AACs and low levels of the East African Bantu AAC (the latter is also present in Bantu speakers from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda). The results indicate distinct East African Bantu migration into southern Africa and are consistent with linguistic and archeological evidence of East African Bantu migration from an area west of Lake Victoria and the incorporation of Khoekhoe ancestry into several of the Southeast Bantu populations ~1500 to 1000 years ago.[21]

Bantu-speaking migrants would have also interacted with some Afro-Asiatic outlier groups in the southeast (mainly Cushitic),[22][23] as well as Nilotic and Central Sudanic speaking groups.

According to the early-split scenario as hypothesized in the 1990s, the southward dispersal had reached the Congo rainforest by about 1500 BC and the southern savannas by 500 BC, while the eastward dispersal reached the Great Lakes by 1000 BC, expanding further from there as the rich environment supported dense populations. Possible movements by small groups to the southeast from the Great Lakes region could have been more rapid, with initial settlements widely dispersed near the coast and near rivers, because of comparatively harsh farming conditions in areas farther from water. Recent archeological and linguistic evidence about population movements suggests that pioneering groups would have had reached parts of modern KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa sometime prior to the 3rd century AD along the coast and the modern Northern Cape by AD 500.[24]

Cattle terminology in use amongst the relatively few modern Bantu pastoralist groups suggests that the acquisition of cattle may have been from Central Sudanic, Kuliak and Cushitic-speaking neighbors.[25] Linguistic evidence also indicates that the customs of milking cattle were also directly modeled from Cushitic cultures in the area.[26] Cattle terminology in southern African Bantu languages differs from that found among more northerly Bantu-speaking peoples. One recent suggestion is that Cushitic speakers had moved south earlier and interacted with the most northerly of Khoisan speakers who acquired cattle from them and that the earliest arriving Bantu speakers, in turn, got their initial cattle from Cushitic-influenced Khwe-speaking people. Under this hypothesis, larger later Bantu-speaking immigration subsequently displaced or assimilated that southernmost extension of the range of Cushitic speakers.[27][28]

Based on dental evidence, Irish (2016) concluded: Proto-Bantu peoples may have originated in the western region of the Sahara, amid the Kiffian period at Gobero, and may have migrated southward, from the Sahara into various parts of West Africa (e.g., Benin, Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, Togo), as a result of desertification of the Green Sahara in 7000 BCE.[29] From Nigeria and Cameroon, agricultural Proto-Bantu peoples began to migrate, and amid migration, diverged into East Bantu peoples (e.g., Democratic Republic of Congo) and West Bantu peoples (e.g., Congo, Gabon) between 2500 BCE and 1200 BCE.[29] Irish (2016) also views Igbo people and Yoruba people as being possibly back-migrated Bantu peoples.[29]

### Later history

[edit]

The Bantu Kingdom of Kongo, c. 1630

Between the 9th and 15th centuries, Bantu-speaking states began to emerge in the Great Lakes region and in the savanna south of the Central African rainforests. The Monomotapa kings built the Great Zimbabwe complex, a civilisation ancestral to the Shona people.[30] Comparable sites in Southern Africa include Bumbusi in Zimbabwe and Manyikeni in Mozambique.

From the 12th century onward, the processes of state formation amongst Bantu peoples increased in frequency. This was the result of several factors such as a denser population (which led to more specialized divisions of labor, including military power while making emigration more difficult); technological developments in economic activity; and new techniques in the political-spiritual ritualisation of royalty[vague] as the source of national strength and health.[31] Examples of such Bantu states include: the Kingdom of Kongo, Anziku Kingdom, Kingdom of Ndongo, the Kingdom of Matamba the Kuba Kingdom, the Lunda Empire, the Luba Empire, Barotse Empire,[32][33] Kazembe Kingdom, Mbunda Kingdom, Yeke Kingdom, Kasanje Kingdom, Empire of Kitara, Butooro, Bunyoro, Buganda, Busoga, Rwanda, Burundi, Ankole, the Kingdom of Mpororo, the Kingdom of Igara, the Kingdom of Kooki, the Kingdom of Karagwe, Swahili city states, the Mutapa Empire, the Zulu Kingdom, the Ndebele Kingdom, Mthethwa Empire, Tswana city states, Mapungubwe, Kingdom of Eswatini, the Kingdom of Butua, Maravi, Danamombe, Khami, Naletale, Kingdom of Zimbabwe[34] and the Rozwi Empire.[35]

On the coastal section of East Africa, a mixed Bantu community developed through contact with Muslim Arab and Persian traders, Zanzibar being an important part of the Indian Ocean slave trade. The Swahili culture that emerged from these exchanges evinces many Arab and Islamic influences not seen in traditional Bantu culture, as do the many Afro-Arab members of the Bantu Swahili people. With its original speech community centered on the coastal parts of Zanzibar, Kenya, and Tanzania – a seaboard referred to as the Swahili Coast – the Bantu Swahili language contains many Arabic loanwords as a result of these interactions.[36] The Bantu migrations, and centuries later the Indian Ocean slave trade, brought Bantu influence to Madagascar,[37] the Malagasy people showing Bantu admixture, and their Malagasy language Bantu loans.[38] Toward the 18th and 19th centuries, the flow of Zanj slaves from Southeast Africa increased with the rise of the Sultanate of Zanzibar. With the arrival of European colonialists, the Zanzibar Sultanate came into direct trade conflict and competition with Portuguese and other Europeans along the Swahili Coast, leading eventually to the fall of the Sultanate and the end of slave trading on the Swahili Coast in the mid-20th century.

## List of Bantu groups by country

[edit]

Further information: Bantu languages § By country, List of African ethnic groups, and List of African countries by population

Country  | Total population
(millions, 2015 est.)  | % Bantu  | Bantu population
(millions, 2015 est.)  | Zones  | Bantu groups

|
|
|
|
|

Democratic Republic of the Congo | 77 | 80% | 76 | B, C, D, H, J, K, L, M | Bakongo, Mongo, Baluba, numerous others (Ambala, Ambuun, Angba, Babindi, Baboma, Baholo, Balunda, Bangala, Bango, Batsamba, Bazombe, Bemba, Bembe, Bira, Bowa, Dikidiki, Dzing, Fuliiru, Havu, Hema, Hima, Hunde, Hutu, Iboko, Kanioka, Kaonde, Kuba, Komo, Kwango, Lengola, Lokele, Lupu, Lwalwa, Mbala, Mbole, Mbuza (Budja), Nande, Ngoli, Bangoli, Ngombe, Nkumu, Nyanga, Bapende, Popoi, Poto, Sango, Shi, Songo, Sukus, Tabwa, Tchokwé, Téké, Tembo, Tetela, Topoke, Ungana, Vira, Wakuti, Nyindu, Yaka, Yakoma, Yanzi, Yeke, Yela, total 80% Bantu)
Tanzania | 51 | 95% | c. 45 | E, F, G, J, M, N, P | Abakuria, Sukuma, Nyamwezi, Haya, Chaga, Gogo, Makonde, Ngoni, Matumbi, numerous others (majority Bantu)
South Africa | 55 | 75% | 40 | S | Nguni (Zulu, Hlubi, Xhosa, Southern Ndebele, Swazi), Basotho (South Sotho), Bapedi (North Sotho), Venda, Batswana, Tsonga, Kgaga (North Sotho),[39] total 75% Bantu
Kenya | 46 | 60% | 37 | E, J | Agikuyu, Abaluhya, ABASUBA, Akamba, Abagusii, Ameru, Abakuria, Aembu, Ambeere, Taita, Pokomo, Taveta and Mijikenda, numerous others (60% Bantu)
Mozambique | 28 | 99% | 28 | N, P, S | Makua, Sena, Shona (Ndau), Shangaan (Tsonga), Makonde, Yao, Swahili, Tonga, Chopi, Ngoni
Uganda | 37 | 80% | c. 25 | D, J | Baganda, Basoga, Bagwere, Banyoro, Banyankole, Bakiga, Batooro, Bamasaba, Basamia, Bakonjo, Baamba, Baruuli, Banyole, Bafumbira, Bagungu (majority Bantu)
Angola | 26 | 97% | 25 | H, K, R | Ovimbundu, Ambundu, Bakongo, Bachokwe, Balunda, Ganguela, Ovambo, Herero, Xindonga (97% Bantu)
Malawi | 16 | 99% | 16 | N | Chewa, Tumbuka, Yao, Lomwe, Sena, Tonga, Ngoni, Ngonde
Zambia | 15 | 99% | 15 | L, M, N | Nyanja-Chewa, Bemba, Tonga, Tumbuka, BaLunda, Balovale, Kaonde, Nkoya and Lozi, about 70 groups total.
Zimbabwe | 14 | 99% | 14 | S | Shona, Northern Ndebele, Bakalanga, numerous minor groups.
Rwanda | 11 | 76% | 11 | J | Banyarwanda
Burundi | 10 | 78% | 10 | J | Barundi
Cameroon | 22 | 30% | 6 | A | Bulu, Duala, Ewondo, Bafia Bassa, Bakoko, Barombi, Mbo, Subu, Bakwe, Oroko, Bafaw, Fang, Bekpak, Mbam speakers30% Bantu
Republic of the Congo | 5 | 97% | 5 | B, C, H | Bakongo, Sangha, Mbochi, Bateke, Bandzabi, Bapunu, Bakuni, Bavili, Batsangui, Balari, Babémbé, Bayaka, Badondo, Bayaka, Bahumbu.
Botswana | 2.2 | 90% | 2.0 | R, S | Batswana, BaKalanga, Mayeyi 90% Bantu
Equatorial Guinea | 2.0 | 95% | 1.9 | A | Fang, Bubi, 95% Bantu
Lesotho | 1.9 | 99% | 1.9 | S | Basotho
Gabon | 1.9 | 95% | 1.8 | B | Fang, Nzebi, Myene, Kota, Shira, Punu, Kande.
Namibia | 2.3 | 70% | 1.6 | K, R | Ovambo, Kavango, Herero, Himba, Mayeyi 70% Bantu
Eswatini | 1.1 | 99% | 1.1 | S | Swazi, Zulu, Tsonga
Somalia | 13.8 | <15% | <2.1 | E | Somali Bantu, Bajuni
Comoros | 0.8 | 99% | 0.8 | E, G | Comorian people
Sub-Saharan Africa  | 970[40] | c. 37%  | c. 360 |  |

## Use in South Africa

[edit]

Main article: Bantu-speaking peoples of South Africa

Unmarried Zulu women in Southern Africa

Zulu men dressed in traditional aprons, carrying ceremonial weapons.

Zulu people performing Ukusina traditional dance, 1958

In the 1920s, relatively liberal South Africans, missionaries, and the native African intelligentsia began to use the term "Bantu" in preference to "Native". After World War II, the National Party governments adopted that usage officially, while the growing African nationalist movement and its liberal allies turned to the term "African" instead, so that "Bantu" became identified with the policies of apartheid. By the 1970s this so discredited "Bantu" as an ethnic-racial designation that the apartheid government switched to the term "Black" in its official racial categorizations, restricting it to Bantu-speaking Africans, at about the same time that the Black Consciousness Movement led by Steve Biko and others were defining "Black" to mean all non-European South Africans (Bantus, Khoisan, Coloureds and Indians). In modern South Africa, the word's connection to apartheid has become so discredited that it is only used in its original linguistic meaning.[6]

Examples of South African usages of "Bantu" include:

1. One of South Africa's politicians of recent times, General Bantubonke Harrington Holomisa (Bantubonke is a compound noun meaning "all the people"), is known as Bantu Holomisa.
2. The South African apartheid governments originally gave the name "bantustans" to the eleven rural reserve areas intended for nominal independence to deny indigenous Bantu South Africans citizenship. "Bantustan" originally reflected an analogy to the various ethnic "-stans" of Western and Central Asia. Again association with apartheid discredited the term, and the South African government shifted to the politically appealing but historically deceptive term "ethnic homelands". Meanwhile, the anti-apartheid movement persisted in calling the areas bantustans, to drive home their political illegitimacy.
3. The abstract noun ubuntu, humanity or humaneness, is derived regularly from the Nguni noun stem -ntu in Xhosa, Zulu and Ndebele. In Swati the stem is -ntfu and the noun is buntfu.
4. In the Sotho–Tswana languages of Southern Africa, batho is the cognate term to Nguni abantu, illustrating that such cognates need not actually look like the -ntu root exactly. The early African National Congress had a newspaper called Abantu-Batho from 1912 to 1933, which carried columns written in English, Zulu, Sotho, and Xhosa.

## See also

[edit]

* African Pygmies
* Bantu mythology
* Bantu music
* Congoid
* Demographics of Africa
* Dume district
* Genetic history of Sub-Saharan Africa
* History of West Africa
* Khoisan
* Languages of Africa
* List of ethnic groups of Africa

## References

[edit]

1. ^ "Bantu people (Central, East, Southern Africa)". Africa EENI Global Business School. Archived from the original on 29 April 2023. Retrieved 21 August 2022.
2. ^ Butt, John J. (2006). The Greenwood Dictionary of World History. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 39. ISBN 978-0-313-32765-0.
3. ^ "Guthrie (1967–71) names some 440 Bantu 'varieties', Grimes (2000) has 501 (minus a few 'extinct' or 'almost extinct', Bastin et al. (1999) have 542, Maho (this volume) has some 660, and Mann et al. (1987) have c. 680." Derek Nurse, 2006, "Bantu Languages", in the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, p. 2. Ethnologue's report for Southern Bantoid Archived 21 January 2022 at the Wayback Machine lists a total of 680 languages. The count includes 13 Mbam languages which are not always included under "Narrow Bantu".
4. ^ Total population cannot be established with any accuracy due to the unavailability of precise census data from Sub-Saharan Africa. A number just above 200 million was cited in the early 2000s (see Niger-Congo languages: subgroups and numbers of speakers for a 2007 compilation of data from SIL Ethnologue, citing 210 million). Population estimates for West-Central Africa were recognized as significantly too low by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs in 2015 ("World Population Prospects: The 2016 Revision – Key Findings and Advance Tables" (PDF). United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. July 2016. Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 June 2019. Retrieved 26 June 2017.). Population growth in Central-West Africa as of 2015[update] is estimated at between 2.5% and 2.8% p.a., for an annual increase of the Bantu population by about 8 to 10 million.
5. ^ Roscoe, John (2011). The Baganda an Account of Their Native Customs and Beliefs. Cambridge Univ Pr. ISBN 978-1-108-03139-4. OCLC 714729287.
6. ^ a b "Defining the term 'Bantu' | South African History Online". www.sahistory.org.za. Archived from the original on 13 October 2023. Retrieved 24 August 2020.
7. ^ Silverstein, Raymond O. (1968). "A note on the term "Bantu" as first used by W. H. I. Bleek". African Studies. 27 (4): 211–212. doi:10.1080/00020186808707298.
8. ^ R.K.Herbert and R. Bailey in Rajend Mesthrie (ed.), Language in South Africa (2002), p. 50 Archived 27 June 2018 at the Wayback Machine.
9. ^ p. 50 Archived 27 June 2018 at the Wayback Machine.
10. ^ Seidensticker, Dirk (28 March 2024). "Pikunda-Munda and Batalimo-Maluba Archaeological Investigations of the Iron Age Settlement History of the Western and Northern Congo Basin". African Archaeological Review. 41 (2): 5–6. doi:10.1007/s10437-024-09576-7. ISSN 0263-0338. OCLC 10194943180. S2CID 268802330.
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13. ^ "The migration history of Bantu-speaking people: genomics reveals the benefits of admixture and sheds new light on slave trade". Institut Pasteur. 12 May 2017. Archived from the original on 10 August 2023. Retrieved 5 December 2023.
14. ^ a b c Hie Lim Kim; Aakrosh Ratan; George H. Perry; Alvaro Montenegro; Webb Miller; Stephan C. Schuster (2014). "Khoisan hunter-gatherers have been the largest population throughout most of modern-human demographic history". Nature Communications. 5: 5692. Bibcode:2014NatCo...5.5692K. doi:10.1038/ncomms6692. PMC 4268704. PMID 25471224.
15. ^ "The Chronological Evidence for the Introduction of Domestic Stock in Southern Africa" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 March 2009.
16. ^ "Botswana History Page 1: Brief History of Botswana". Archived from the original on 17 May 2020. Retrieved 13 May 2015.
17. ^ "5.2 Historischer Überblick". Archived from the original on 16 October 2007. Retrieved 13 May 2015.
18. ^ THE INSTITUT PASTEUR (5 May 2017). "THE MIGRATION HISTORY OF BANTU-SPEAKING PEOPLE". Archived from the original on 10 August 2023. Retrieved 9 August 2023.
19. ^ Vansina, J. (1995). "New Linguistic Evidence and the Bantu Expansion'". Journal of African History. 36 (2): 173–195. doi:10.1017/S0021853700034101. JSTOR 182309. S2CID 162117464.
20. ^ Pollard, Elizabeth; Rosenberg, Clifford; Tignor, Robert (2011). Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History of the World: From the Beginnings of Humankind to the Present. New York: Norton. p. 289.
21. ^ Tishkoff, SA; et al. (2009). "The Genetic Structure and History of Africans and African Americans". Science. 324 (5930): 1035–44. Bibcode:2009Sci...324.1035T. doi:10.1126/science.1172257. PMC 2947357. PMID 19407144. "African Genetics Study Revealing Origins, Migration And 'Startling Diversity' Of African Peoples". Science Daily. 2 May 2009. Archived from the original on 29 August 2011. Retrieved 5 September 2011. see also: De Filippo, C; Barbieri, C; Whitten, M; et al. (2011). "Y-chromosomal variation in sub-Saharan Africa: Insights into the history of Niger–Congo groups". Molecular Biology and Evolution. 28 (3): 1255–69. doi:10.1093/molbev/msq312. PMC 3561512. PMID 21109585.
22. ^ Toyin Falola, Aribidesi Adisa Usman, Movements, borders, and identities in Africa, (University Rochester Press: 2009), pp.4-5.
23. ^ Fitzpatrick, Mary (1999). Tanzania, Zanzibar & Pemba. Lonely Planet. p. 39. ISBN 978-0-86442-726-7.
24. ^ Newman (1995), Ehret (1998), Shillington (2005)
25. ^ Schoenbrun, David L. (1993). "We Are What We Eat: Ancient Agriculture between the Great Lakes". The Journal of African History. 34 (1): 1–31. doi:10.1017/S0021853700032989. JSTOR 183030. S2CID 162660041.
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32. ^ Holub, Emil. Seven Years in South Africa, volume 2. Archived from the original on 16 July 2022. Retrieved 28 July 2022.
33. ^ McCracken, John (February 1974). "Mutumba Mainga: Bulozi under the Luyana kings: political evolution and state formation in pre-colonial Zambia. xvii, 278 pp., 8 plates. London: Longman, 1973. £4". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 37 (3): 726–727. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00128022. ISSN 1474-0699. S2CID 154380804. Archived from the original on 28 July 2022. Retrieved 28 July 2022.
34. ^ Roland Oliver, et al. "Africa South of the Equator," in Africa Since 1800. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 21-25.
35. ^ Isichei, Elizabeth Allo, A History of African Societies to 1870 Cambridge University Press, 1997, ISBN 978-0-521-45599-2 page 435
36. ^ Daniel Don Nanjira, African Foreign Policy, and Diplomacy: From Antiquity to the 21st Century, ABC-CLIO, 2010, p. 114.
37. ^ Cambridge World History of Slavery The Cambridge World History of Slavery: The ancient Mediterranean world. By Keith Bradley, Paul Cartledge. pg. 76 Archived 13 May 2023 at the Wayback Machine (2011), accessed 15 February 2012
38. ^ "On the Origins and Admixture of Malagasy: New Evidence from High-Resolution Analyses of Paternal and Maternal Lineages". 9 September 2014. Archived from the original on 9 September 2014.
39. ^ THE ROLE OF THE YOUTH IN THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE APARTHEID REGIME IN THABAMOOPO DISTRICT OF THE LEBOWA HOMELAND, 1970 -1994: A CRITICAL HISTORICAL STUDY, page 47
40. ^ Population of all of Sub-Saharan Africa, including the West African and Sahel countries with no Bantu populations. Source: 995.7 million in 2016 according to the 2017 revision of the UN World Population Prospects, growth rate 2.5% p.a.

### Bibliography

[edit]

* Christopher Ehret, An African Classical Age: Eastern and Southern Africa in World History, 1000 B.C. to A.D. 400, James Currey, London, 1998
* Christopher Ehret and Merrick Posnansky, eds., The Archaeological and Linguistic Reconstruction of African History, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1982
* April A. Gordon and Donald L. Gordon, Understanding Contemporary Africa, Lynne Riener, London, 1996
* John M. Janzen, Ngoma: Discourses of Healing in Central and Southern Africa, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1992
* James L. Newman, The Peopling of Africa: A Geographic Interpretation, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1995. ISBN 0-300-07280-5.
* Kevin Shillington, History of Africa, 3rd ed. St. Martin's Press, New York, 2005
* Jan Vansina, Paths in the Rainforest: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1990
* Jan Vansina, "New linguistic evidence on the expansion of Bantu", Journal of African History 36:173–195, 1995

## External links

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This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Hottentots". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.

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Bantu religion and folklore

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