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TERMS & NAMES
Migration
• Bantu-speaking
peoples
CASE STUDY: Bantu-Speaking
Peoples
MAIN IDEA
WHY IT MATTERS NOW
Throughout history, people have been
driven to uproot themselves and
explore their world.
Migration continues to shape the
modern world.
SETTING THE STAGE Human history is a motion picture, a vibrating spectacle of
movement, collision, settlement, and more movement. Human beings have always
been driven to search for new opportunities. The desire to move on in search of a
better life seems to be built into human nature.
Migrations Through History
Aside from the general human desire for change, migrations have many specific
causes. Some of these are listed in the chart below.
PATTERNS OF CHANGE: Migration
Cause
Example
Effect
Environmental change
Shift in climate, depletion of
natural resources, drought,
earthquake
Redistribution of world’s
population, blending of cultures
Economic pressure
Increasing population, famine,
unemployment
Shifts in population
Political and religious
persecution
Slave trade, war, ethnic
cleansing, repression
Dislocation and oppression of
peoples, spread of ideas and
religions
Technological development
Tools, agriculture, iron
smelting, communications and
transportation networks
Development of civilizations
and empires
S K I L L B U I L D E R : Interpreting Charts
1. Which causes of migration have remained important throughout history? Explain.
2. Which cause do you think is most important in modern migrations? Why?
As an important pattern in human culture, migrations have influenced world history from its outset. The first human beings began populating the globe as they were
pushed to move on by environmental change, population growth, and technological
advances, such as the smelting of iron. In the 15th century, the Ottomans’ drive for
power pushed them to move all over the ancient world to create a massive empire.
Seventeenth-century European settlers were pulled to America by the hope of religious tolerance and improving their lives economically.
One way experts can trace the patterns of this movement of people through history
is by studying the spread of languages. People bring their languages with them when
they move to new places. And languages, like the people who speak them, are living
things that evolve and change in regular ways. If two languages have similar words for
a particular object or idea, for example, it is likely that the people who spoke them
were in close contact at one time.
PATTERNS OF CHANGE
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CASE STUDY: Bantu-Speaking Peoples
Massive Migrations
This carved wood
mask mingles
human and animal
features. It probably
was used by Bantu
speakers in a ceremony to communicate with natural
or ancestral spirits.
Language is one major element that unites or divides people. One group of African
languages, the Niger-Congo, includes over 900 individual languages. A family of languages in this group developed from a single parent tongue, Proto-Bantu. The speakers
of these related languages belong to many different ethnic groups, but often are
referred to collectively as Bantu-speaking peoples. (The word Bantu itself means
“the people.”) These early Africans made one of the greatest migrations in history and
populated the southern third of the continent. The Bantu-speaking people lived in the
savanna south of the Sahara in the area that is now southeastern Nigeria. Starting in
the first few centuries a.d. and continuing until recent times, a small number of Bantu
speakers moved southward throughout Africa, spreading their language and culture.
Bantu Culture Bantu speakers were not one people, but a group of peoples who
shared certain cultural characteristics. They were farmers and nomadic herders who
developed and passed along the skill of ironworking. Many experts believe they were
related to the Nok peoples.
Beginning at least 2,000 years ago or earlier, small groups of
Bantu speakers began spreading south and east. They shared
their skills with the people they met, adapted their methods to
suit each new environment, and learned new ways. They followed the Congo River through the rain forests. There they
farmed the riverbanks—the only place that received
enough sunlight to support agriculture.
As they moved eastward into the savannas, they adapted
their techniques for herding goats and sheep to raising cattle. Passing through what is now Kenya and Tanzania, they
learned to cultivate new crops. One such crop was the
banana, which came from Southeast Asia via Indonesian
travelers. In this way, they were able to expand and vary their
food supply. Within 1,500 years or so—a short time in the
span of history—the Bantu speakers reached the southern tip
of Africa.
Some of their farming methods quickly exhausted the land,
however. The search for new, fertile soil kept the migrating people
on the move. A 19th-century Scottish missionary and explorer, David
Livingstone, described the farming methods of one group of Bantu speakers,
which had probably changed little over time:
A V O I C E F R O M T H E PA S T
Food abounds, and very little labor is required for its cultivation. . . . When a garden
becomes too poor for good crops . . . the owner removes a little farther into the forest,
applies fire around the roots of the larger trees to kill them, cuts down the smaller, and
a new, rich garden is ready for the seed.
DAVID LIVINGSTONE, quoted in History of World Societies
Effects of the Migration Although it isn’t possible to know exactly what caused the
Bantu-speaking peoples to migrate, anthropologists have proposed a logical explanation. These experts suggest that once these peoples developed agriculture, they were
able to produce more food than they could by hunting and gathering. As a result, the
population in West Africa increased. Because this enlarged population required more
food, the earliest Bantu speakers planted more land, and soon there wasn’t enough
land to go around. They couldn’t go north in search of land, because the area was
densely populated and the Sahara was slowly advancing toward them. The areas that
204 CHAPTER 8
THINK THROUGH HISTORY
A. Clarifying How
did the Bantu deal
with the problems
they encountered in
their migrations?
A. Answer They
adapted their old
ways to new environments and learned
new ways from the
people they encountered.
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IB
DE
SE
ATL
R.
NAM
Bantu Migrations,
once had been savanna were undergoing desertification. So the people
500 B.C.–A.D.1500
moved southward.
Within only 1,500 years, the Bantu
0° Equator
Lake
speakers had populated much of the
Victoria
southern half of Africa. The area was
AFRICA
Lake
sparsely populated with peoples like the
Tanganyika
BaMbuti and the San. These Africans
were not Bantu speakers and lived
then, as they still do, by hunting and
10°S
Lake
gathering.
Nyasa
Territorial wars often broke out as
the Bantu speakers spread south into
Zambezi
these peoples’ lands. Fighting with
iron-tipped spears, the newcomers eas20°S
ily drove off the BaMbuti and the San,
KALAHARI
DESERT L i m p o p o R
who were armed only with stone
Tropic of Capricorn
weapons. Today, the BaMbuti are confined to a corner of the Congo Basin.
The San live only around the Kalahari
INDIAN
Orange R.
Desert in northwestern South Africa,
OCEAN
30°S
Namibia, and Botswana.
Bantu migration routes
The Bantu speakers also exchanged
500 Miles
0
ideas and intermarried with the people
0
1,000 Kilometers
they joined, however. This intermingling
created new cultures with unique cusG E O G R A P H Y S K I L L B U I L D E R : Interpreting Maps
toms and traditions. Although the Bantu
1. Human-Environment Interaction What geographic features did
the Bantu speakers encounter in the course of their migrations?
migrations produced a great diversity of
2.
Movement Compare this map with the one on page 194. Why
cultures, they also left a unifying infludidn’t the Bantu speakers migrate northward?
ence on the continent. As a result of these
migrations, in Africa today there are at
least 60 million people who speak one of the hundreds of Bantu languages.
Migration continues to shape the modern world as new factors make living conditions difficult. For example, political refugees leave or are forced out of countries for
places that offer them safe haven. A worldwide process of urbanization also sets people in motion. It draws them from rural areas where there is little opportunity for
advancement to cities such as Mexico City. In the next chapter, you will see how early
Americans underwent a process of growth similar to that of early Africans.
ANTIC OCEAN
B. Analyzing
Causes What circumstances might
have caused the
Bantu to migrate?
B. Answer
Development of agriculture, increased
population, and
resulting need for
more fertile land.
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RT
30°E
20°E
40°E
10°E
Section 3 Assessment
1. TERMS & NAMES
2. TAKING NOTES
Identify
• Bantu-speaking
peoples
In a chart like the one below, list
three reasons why people
migrate. Give an example of a
migration that occurred for each
reason.
3. COMPARING AND
CONTRASTING
How might the migrating Bantu
speakers and the peoples they
encountered have reacted to each
other?
4. THEME ACTIVITY
Cultural Interaction With a
classmate, act out an encounter
between a native of southern
Africa and a Bantu speaker who
has just migrated into the area.
THINK ABOUT
Reason for migration Example
1.
• Bantu culture
• territorial wars
• cultural adaptation
2.
3.
PATTERNS OF CHANGE
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