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1 results

  • 6 - The emergence of Bantu Africa

  • Edited by J. D. Fage
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Africa
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 February 1979, pp 342-409

  • Summary

    In Africa south of the Equator the period from 500 BC until AD 1000 was first and foremost the period which saw the change to food production. The transition to food production coincided with the transition from the Stone to the Iron Age. This chapter considers the historical implications of recent work on the classification of the Bantu languages at the end of the Stone Age. The archaeological evidence surveyed suggests that the Iron Age entered Bantu Africa across the western half of its northern frontier. The introduction of the South-East Asian food-plants was the most significant event of Early Iron Age times in the forest region. This must presumably have been a process which started on the east coast of Africa with the oceanic voyages of Indonesian traders and migrants. A scatter of exotic objects, such as glass beads and seashells, has come from Early Iron Age sites in the southern half of Bantu Africa.