Bantu Geographic & Linguistic Origins
Bantu languages have deep roots in Niger-Congo languages dating back 5500 years, they form a sub-sub-branch of the Niger-COngo family. While all Bantu languages descend from Niger-Congo and are all related to each other historically, grammatically, and lexically, the people who speak the languages are not necessarily from a single origin. People who speak Bantu languages have many origins, because people adopt languages that are not their birth language. The above map provides a visual of approximately where people developed the earliest Bantu speech communities, between the confluence of the Niger and Congo rivers around 3500 BCE.
Speakers of Bantu languages extended from the equatorial rainforest of Africa through the south and southeast of the Congo Basin to the Central Africa grasslands, as well as the East African Great Lakes region, the highlands, savannas, and coastlands of eastern Africa, and the steppes, grasslands, savannahs, and woodlands of southern Africa. For more than four thousand years, speakers of Bantu-descended languages established communities across the majority of sub-Saharan Africa. This is among the largest sets of migrations—in scale and time depth— known anywhere. Across vast and varied landscapes, linguistically related Bantu-descended people developed unique economies, political systems, religious ideologies, and cultural practices.
Bantu-speaking populations have been incredibly important in African and global histories precisely because the implications of their contributions are so instructive and illuminating on both the contingent and processual nature of history.
Where Is The Bantu Matrilineal Belt?
The communities that maintain different aspects of matrilineal economic, social, political, and cultural institutions are predominantly, though not exclusively, located in a belt that includes parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The Bantu Matrilineal belt stretches from west central through central into eastern Africa.
Certainly not all Bantu speakers or Bantu languages are located in the Matrilineal Belt. Non-Bantu speakers also reside in the region. A disproportionately large percentage of people who live in the Matrilineal Belt speak Bantu languages and focus their attention on their matrilineage as a source of material and social support, authority, and identity.
Which Bantu Languages?
| Wungu | Vidunda | KundaIla | Zimba |
| Ndali | Kagulu | Tonga | Senga |
| Nyakyusa | Zaramo | Soli | Yao |
| Malila | Kutu | Lenje | Sitongwe |
| Nyiha | Kwere | Kaonde | Kihaya |
| Lambya | Lugulu | Tsi-Luba | Cuabo |
| Safwa | Doe | Luba-Katanga | Makua |
| Mambwe | Kami | Hemba | Nyamwezi |
| Lungu | Bemba | Zela | Kimbu |
| Fipa | Bisa | Sanga | Sukuma |
| Nyamwanga | Marungu | Kanyok | Sumbwa |
| Pimbwe | Lamba | Songye | Kongo |
| Rungwa | Lala | Sena | Lega |
| Nyika | Tabwa | Chewa | Lomongo |
| Gogo | Ambo | Tumbuka | Chokwe Angola and DRC |
| Nilamba | Ushi | Ngoni | |
| Sagala | Nsenga | Nyanja |
What Do The Distributions of Shared Word Roots Look Like?
Where Were Ethnographies Collected?
Democratic Republic of Congo
Kenya
Malawi
Namibia
Tanzania
Uganda
Zambia