The Bantu Expansion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koen Bostoen
Keyword(s):  
Late Holocene ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Technological Innovations ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Bantu Languages ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Eastern And Southern Africa

The Bantu Expansion stands for the concurrent dispersal of Bantu languages and Bantu-speaking people from an ancestral homeland situated in the Grassfields region in the borderland between current-day Nigeria and Cameroon. During their initial migration across most of Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa, which took place between approximately 5,000 and 1,500 years ago, Bantu speech communities not only introduced new languages in the areas where they immigrated but also new lifestyles, in which initially technological innovations such as pottery making and the use of large stone tools played an important role as did subsequently also farming and metallurgy. Wherever early Bantu speakers started to develop a sedentary way of life, they left an archaeologically visible culture. Once settled, Bantu-speaking newcomers strongly interacted with autochthonous hunter-gatherers, as is still visible in the gene pool and/or the languages of certain present-day Bantu speech communities. The driving forces behind what is the principal linguistic, cultural, and demographic process in Late Holocene Africa are still a matter of debate, but it is increasingly accepted that the climate-induced destruction of the rainforest in West Central Africa around 2,500 years ago gave a boost to the Bantu Expansion.

The Bantu Expansion

2020 ◽  
pp. 227-239
Author(s):  
Koen Bostoen
Keyword(s):  
Late Holocene ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Bantu Languages ◽  
Demographic Event

The Bantu Expansion, the foremost linguistic, cultural, and demographic event in Late Holocene Africa, has sparked a fervent interdisciplinary debate, especially regarding its driving forces. As is often the case with hotly debated issues, certain ‘factoids’ bearing little relation to factual evidence emerge. Two such factoids are that (1) the Bantu Expansion would have been a single migratory macro-event and (2) it would have been driven by agriculture. These two widely held beliefs are critically assessed here. Regarding (1), the chapter argues that the Bantu Expansion did involve the actual migration of Bantu speakers but that backward and forward migration occurred after the initial spread and that Bantu languages also expanded through adoption by autochthonous hunter-gatherers. As for (2), the chapter argues that the earliest Bantu speakers had their own archeologically visible culture, but they were not farmers. Therefore, the Bantu Expansion is not a textbook example of a farming/language dispersal.

scholarly journals The Beginning of the Neolithic in Southeast Anatolia

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 76-95
Author(s):  
Necmi Karul
Keyword(s):  
Food Production ◽  
Time Span ◽  
Technological Innovations ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Early Neolithic ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Multifaceted Approach ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
Southeast Anatolia ◽  
New Research

New research in southeastern Anatolia at Early Neolithic sites has brought a fresh perspective on the emergence of the Neolithic way of life in southwest Asia. In addition to providing more details on the transition to settled life, food production, and technological innovations, this more recent work has increased our understanding of both the time span and geography of the last hunter-gatherers and the earliest farmers in the wider region. Now the picture of the beginning of the Neolithic is more complex and fragmented. This complexity necessitates a multifaceted approach to the questions of the emergence of the Neolithic. In this regard, the data coming from Pre-Pottery Neolithic A sites in southeastern Anatolia, particularly in the Upper Tigris Basin, is remarkable. In this paper the transitional stage to the Neolithic in the region and new data from Gusir Höyük is discussed according to the architectural data.

scholarly journals Bantu expansion shows that habitat alters the route and pace of human dispersals

2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (43) ◽  
pp. 13296-13301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Grollemund ◽  
Simon Branford ◽  
Koen Bostoen ◽  
Andrew Meade ◽  
Chris Venditti ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Random Walk ◽  
Geographical Area ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Biological Species ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Bantu Languages ◽  
Cultural Events ◽  
West Central ◽  
Dated Phylogeny ◽  
Migratory Movements

Unlike most other biological species, humans can use cultural innovations to occupy a range of environments, raising the intriguing question of whether human migrations move relatively independently of habitat or show preferences for familiar ones. The Bantu expansion that swept out of West Central Africa beginning ∼5,000 y ago is one of the most influential cultural events of its kind, eventually spreading over a vast geographical area a new way of life in which farming played an increasingly important role. We use a new dated phylogeny of ∼400 Bantu languages to show that migrating Bantu-speaking populations did not expand from their ancestral homeland in a “random walk” but, rather, followed emerging savannah corridors, with rainforest habitats repeatedly imposing temporal barriers to movement. When populations did move from savannah into rainforest, rates of migration were slowed, delaying the occupation of the rainforest by on average 300 y, compared with similar migratory movements exclusively within savannah or within rainforest by established rainforest populations. Despite unmatched abilities to produce innovations culturally, unfamiliar habitats significantly alter the route and pace of human dispersals.

scholarly journals Migration and interaction in a contact zone: mtDNA variation among Bantu-speakers in southern Africa

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara Barbieri ◽  
Mário Vicente ◽  
Sandra Oliveira ◽  
Koen Bostoen ◽  
Jorge Rocha ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Southern Africa ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Bantu Languages ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Shared Ancestry ◽  
Demographic Processes ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Eastern And Southern Africa ◽  
Linguistic Divide ◽  
Mtdna Diversity

Bantu speech communities expanded over large parts of sub-Saharan Africa within the last 4000-5000 years, reaching different parts of southern Africa 1200-2000 years ago. The Bantu languages subdivide in several major branches, with languages belonging to the Eastern and Western Bantu branches spreading over large parts of Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa. There is still debate whether this linguistic divide is correlated with a genetic distinction between Eastern and Western Bantu speakers. During their expansion, Bantu speakers would have come into contact with diverse local populations, such as the Khoisan hunter-gatherers and pastoralists of southern Africa, with whom they may have intermarried. In this study, we analyze complete mtDNA genome sequences from over 900 Bantu-speaking individuals from Angola, Zambia, Namibia, and Botswana to investigate the demographic processes at play during the last stages of the Bantu expansion. Our results show that most of these Bantu-speaking populations are genetically very homogenous, with no genetic division between speakers of Eastern and Western Bantu languages. Most of the mtDNA diversity in our dataset is due to different degrees of admixture with autochthonous populations. Only the pastoralist Himba and Herero stand out due to high frequencies of particular L3f and L3d lineages; the latter are also found in the neighboring Damara, who speak a Khoisan language and were foragers and small-stock herders. In contrast, the close cultural and linguistic relatives of the Herero and Himba, the Kuvale, are genetically similar to other Bantu-speakers. Nevertheless, as demonstrated by resampling tests, the genetic divergence of Herero, Himba, and Kuvale is compatible with a common shared ancestry with high levels of drift and differential female admixture with local pre-Bantu populations.

Power, security, and exchange: Impacts of a Late Holocene volcanic eruption in Subarctic North America

2021 ◽  
pp. 019769312098682
Author(s):  
Todd J Kristensen ◽  
John W Ives ◽  
Kisha Supernant
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Volcanic Eruption ◽  
Late Holocene ◽  
River Basins ◽  
Adaptive Responses ◽  
Major Event ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Bow And Arrow

We synthesize environmental and cultural change following a volcanic eruption at A.D. 846–848 in Subarctic North America to demonstrate how social relationships shaped responses to natural disasters. Ethnohistoric accounts and archaeometric studies reveal differences in human adaptations in the Yukon and Mackenzie river basins that relate to exertions of power over contested resources versus affordances of security to intercept dispersed migrating animals. The ways that pre-contact hunter-gatherers maintained or redressed ecological imbalances influenced respective trajectories of resilience to a major event. Adaptive responses to a volcanic eruption affected the movement of bow and arrow technology and the proliferation of copper use in northwest North America.

Stable isotope studies in the Salitroso Lake Basin (southern Patagonia, Argentina): assessing diet of Late Holocene hunter-gatherers

2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Tessone ◽  
A. F. Zangrando ◽  
G. Barrientos ◽  
R. Goñi ◽  
H. Panarello ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Stable Isotope ◽  
Late Holocene ◽  
Lake Basin ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Southern Patagonia ◽  
Isotope Studies

scholarly journals Determinación del sexo a través de la métrica dental en cazadores recolectores de la transición pampeano-patagónica oriental / SEX DETERMINATION THROUGH DENTAL METRICS FOR HUNTER-GATHERER GROUPS FROM THE EASTERN PAMPA-PATAGONIAN TRANSITION

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leandro Luna ◽  
Gustavo Flensborg
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Dimorphism ◽  
Late Holocene ◽  
Colorado River ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Dental Metrics ◽  
Sexual Information ◽  
Palabras Clave ◽  
Sexual Determination ◽  
Del Rio

<p>El objetivo de este trabajo es evaluar la pertinencia de la métrica dental para obtener información sexual en individuos que habitaron el curso inferior del río Colorado durante el Holoceno tardío (ca. 3000-250 años AP), discutir el grado de dimorfismo sexual e identificar las variables cuantitativas de la dentición que permitan discriminar el sexo de nuevos individuos que se incluyan en futuros análisis. Se estudiaron las medidas máximas bucolinguales y mesiodistales del cuello de los dientes correspondientes a 26 individuos adultos. Las variables más dimórficas corresponden al diámetro bucolingual del canino superior y de ambos segundos molares; en estos casos, las diferencias entre los sexos son estadísticamente significativas. Los resultados obtenidos sobre el dimorfismo sexual se ubican en el extremo superior de los valores correspondientes a diferentes poblaciones humanas. Varios individuos que no contaban con información sexual a través de los métodos tradicionales pudieron ser clasificados desde la métrica dental, lo cual da cuenta del importante potencial de las medidas dentales para contribuir a las caracterizaciones paleodemográficas de conjuntos bioarqueológicos, especialmente en contextos perturbados y con escasa integridad esqueletal.</p><p>Palabras clave: métrica dental; determinación sexual; cazadores-recolectores; curso inferior del río Colorado; Holoceno tardío.</p><p>Abstract<br />The aim of this paper is to evaluate the relevance of dental metrics for obtaining sexual information in individuals who inhabited the lower basin of the Colorado River during the Late Holocene (ca. 3000-250 years BP), to discuss the degree of sexual dimorphism and to identify those quantitative variables adequate for sexual determination of new individuals to be included in future studies. The buccolingual and mesiodistal maximum neck diameters of 26 individual adults were studied. The most dimorphic variables correspond to the buccolingual diameter of the upper canine and both second molars; in these cases, sex differences are statistically significant. The results obtained about sexual dimorphism are located at the upper end of the range for different human populations. Several individuals who had no previous sexual information could be classified using these measurements, which accounts for the significant potential of dental metrics in palaeodemographic characterizations, especially in disturbed bioarchaeological samples.</p><p>Keywords: dental metrics; sexual determination; hunter-gatherers; lower basin of the Colorado River; Late Holocene.</p>

scholarly journals Phylogeographical and Evolutionary History of Variola major Virus; A Question of Timescales?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annalisa Bergna ◽  
Carla Della Ventura ◽  
Rossella Marzo ◽  
Massimo Ciccozzi ◽  
Massimo Galli ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Far East ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Short Term ◽  
The Far East ◽  
Sampling Locations ◽  
Whole Genomes ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Eastern And Southern Africa

In order to reconstruct the origin and pathways of variola virus (VARV) dispersion, we analyzed 47 VARV isolates available in public databases and their SNPs. The mean substitution rate of the whole genomes was 9.41x10-6 (95%HPD:8.5-11.3x10-6) substitutions/site/year. The time of the tree root was estimated to be a mean 68 years (95%HPD:60.5&ndash;75.9). The phylogeographical analysis showed that the Far East and India were the most probable locations of the tree root and of the inner nodes, respectively, whereas for the outer nodes it corresponded to the sampling locations. The Bayesian Skyline plot showed that the effective number of infections started to grow exponentially in 1915-1920, peaked in the 1940s, and then decreased to zero. Our results suggests that the VARV major strains circulating between 1940s-1970s probably shared a common ancestor originated in the Far East; subsequently moved to India, which became the center of its dispersion to eastern and southern Africa, and then to central Africa and the Middle East, probably following the movements of people between south-eastern Asia and the other places with a common colonial history. These findings may help to explain the controversial reconstructions of the history of VARV obtained using long- and short- term calibrations.

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