page_title: Bantu expansion
section_title: Expansion
hierarchical_section_title: Bantu expansion / Expansion
caption_attribution_description: English: A photograph of a San rock art painting on display at the Iziko Museum in Cape Town from the Drakensberg in Lesotho. It is believed to depict Nguni or Sotho warriors who migrated southwards and settled in the summer rainfall regions of Southern Africa within the last 2000 years.
context_page_description: The Bantu expansion is a major series of migrations of the original Proto-Bantu-speaking group, who spread from an original nucleus around West Africa-Central Africa across much of sub-Saharan Africa. In the process, the Proto-Bantu-speaking settlers displaced or absorbed pre-existing hunter-gatherer and pastoralist groups that they encountered.
  The primary evidence for this expansion is linguistic – a great many of the languages spoken across Sub-Equatorial Africa are remarkably similar to each other, suggesting the common cultural origin of their original speakers. The linguistic core of the Bantu languages, which comprise a branch of the Niger–Congo family, was located in the adjoining regions of Cameroon and Nigeria. However, attempts to trace the exact route of the expansion, to correlate it with archaeological evidence and genetic evidence, have not been conclusive; thus although the expansion is widely accepted as having taken place, many aspects of it remain in doubt or are highly contested.
  The expansion is believed to have taken place in at least two waves, between about 3,000 and 2,000 years ago.
caption: San rock art depicting a shield-carrying Bantu warrior.  The movement of Bantu settlers, who migrated southwards and settled in the summer rainfall regions of Southern Africa within the last 2000 years, established a range of relationships with the indigenous San people from bitter conflict to ritual interaction and intermarriage.
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