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WonderHuman migration fact

Over several thousand years, Bantu-speaking farming peoples spread from the highlands between today's Cameroon and Nigeria across most of central, eastern and southern Africa. Hundreds of related Bantu languages, including Swahili, Zulu, Shona and Kikuyu, are spoken there today.

Bantu migrations

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The story behind the card

Historians once pictured a single great 'Bantu migration'. Linguistic, archaeological and genetic evidence now points to a slower spread along many routes, roughly between 4000 BC and AD 500, with Bantu speakers reaching what is now South Africa by about AD 300. The German linguist Wilhelm Bleek coined the name Bantu in 1862 from the word for 'people' shared by many of these languages. Farming, herding and iron-working spread in different mixes from region to region, and everywhere the newcomers mixed with the people already living there. The click sounds of Zulu and Xhosa, for example, were borrowed from the Khoisan languages spoken earlier in southern Africa.

Türkçe oku
Bantu dilleri konuşan çiftçi topluluklar, binlerce yıl içinde bugünkü Kamerun ile Nijerya arasındaki yaylalardan Orta, Doğu ve Güney Afrika'nın büyük bölümüne yayıldı. Bugün bu bölgelerde Svahili, Zulu, Şona ve Kikuyu gibi yüzlerce akraba Bantu dili konuşuluyor.

Tarihçiler bir zamanlar tek ve büyük bir “Bantu göçü” düşünüyordu. Bugün dilbilimsel, arkeolojik ve genetik kanıtlar, kabaca MÖ 4000 ile MS 500 arasında pek çok yoldan ilerleyen daha yavaş bir yayılmaya işaret ediyor; Bantu dilli topluluklar bugünkü Güney Afrika'ya MS 300 civarında ulaşmıştı. “Bantu” adını 1862'de Alman dilbilimci Wilhelm Bleek, bu dillerin çoğunda “insanlar” anlamına gelen sözcükten türetti. Tarım, hayvancılık ve demircilik bölgeden bölgeye farklı bileşimlerle yayıldı; yeni gelenler her yerde orada yaşayan halklarla karıştı. Örneğin Zulu ve Xhosa dillerindeki “tık” sesleri, güney Afrika'da daha önce konuşulan Khoisan dillerinden alınmıştır.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Bantu expansion
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