| The Bantu expansion was a critical movement of people in African history and the settling of the continent. People speaking Bantu languages (a branch of the Niger–Congo family) began in the second millennium BCE to spread from Cameroon eastward to the Great Lakes region. In the first millennium BCE, Bantu languages spread from the Great Lakes to southern and east Africa. An early expansion was south to the upper Zambezi valley in the 2nd century BCE. Then, Bantu speakers pushed westward to the savannahs of present-day Angola and eastward into Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe in the 1st century CE. The second thrust from the Great Lakes was eastward, 2,000 years ago, expanding to the Indian Ocean coast, Kenya and Tanzania. The eastern group eventually met the southern migrants from the Great Lakes in Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Both groups continued southward, with eastern groups continuing to Mozambique and reaching Maputo in the 2nd century CE, and expanding as far as Durban. By the later first millennium CE, the expansion had reached the Great Kei River of South Africa. Sorghum, a major Bantu crop, could not thrive under the winter rainfall of Namibia and the western Cape. Khoisan people inhabited the remaining parts of southern Africa.[51] |
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