The migration that transformed Africa’s languages, genes, and cultures

Research combining genetics, archaeology and linguistics is tracing the Bantu-speaking peoples’ expansion from western Africa across much of the continent’s south, beginning around 6,000 to 4,000 years ago. The migration introduced farming, livestock, pottery and metalworking to many regions, reshaping societies and leaving a lasting linguistic and genetic legacy.

Today, about 350 million people speak one of roughly 500 Bantu languages, and at least as many people have Bantu ancestry. Evidence includes similarities between languages and archaeological finds such as pottery, villages, domesticated animals and ironworking sites. Researchers are still debating the migration’s routes and timing, in part because written records and research funding are limited.