New Linguistic Evidence and ‘The Bantu Expansion’

TLDR

The geographic spread of Bantu languages reflects a long, complex history of successive dispersals and reversals over millennia, rather than a single mass migration. The authors propose abandoning the Bantu expansion hypothesis to enable more realistic interpretations of African linguistic and cultural history. Linguistic data conflict with archaeological evidence, showing that the Bantu expansion hypothesis is untenable and that other languages and continuous interactions played a larger role in shaping African societies.

Abstract

New linguistic evidence about the classification of the Bantu languages does not support the current view that these languages spread as the result of a massive migration or ‘expansion’ by its speakers. Rather the present geographic distribution of Bantu languages is the outcome of many complex historical dynamics involving successive dispersals of individual languages over a time span of millennia and involving reversals as well as successes. This is as true for eastern and southern Africa, where a close correlation between the archaeological evidence documenting the diffusion of basic food-related technologies, including metallurgy and the spreading of Bantu languages has become an axiom, as it is elsewhere. The linguistic evidence concerning the dispersal of Bantu languages in these regions of Africa is completely incongruent with the archaeological record. The existing Bantu expansion hypothesis must be totally abandoned. The scrapping of the hypothesis will make room for more realistic and quite different interpretations and research hypotheses. For example, it follows that the local or regional contribution of speakers of other languages, autochthons and others, to the development of later cultures and societies was probably considerably greater than has hitherto been acknowledged and that the continuities in historical dynamics of all sorts between the Bantu-speaking parts of Africa and areas further north and west are greater than has been hitherto realized.