Talk:Bantu expansion

The Quality Of This Article

You know this article at the NIH is a much better overview than this wikipedia page. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3909244/ MrSativa (talk) 03:46, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Origin Of The Bantu Migration

" Before the expansion of farming and pastoralist peoples, including those speaking Bantu languages, Africa south of the equator was populated by hunter-gatherers. "

Source? There are haplogroups other than the E1b1a (which is associated with the Bantu Expansion) in (what after the drying of the Sahara is now) Sub-Saharan Africa. However, there are people with haplogroups A, B, DE, which makes it likely that these haplogroups were displaced by E1b1a. It doesn't mean that there were only 'hunter gatherers' in SSA before the Bantu Expansion, about 3,000 years ago.

The problem with the article, is that it leans very heavily on the historiography of apartheid. And it is characterised by the veneration of the San and Khoi (Bushmen) as safe, 'true Africans', with the Bantu as interlopers, *just like* the Afrikaners/Boers, therefore giving the Bantu no greater right to the land than the Europeans who took it from them. That's the ideology.

There needs to be more history, less assertion in this article. MrSativa (talk) 22:44, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Apartheid era preconceptions are indeed problematic. However, what constitute as Apartheid preconceptions?

Your interpretation is awfully skewed to what symbolises by asserting that the Khoikhoi are the indigenous people of Southern Africa wholly. I personally think your interpretation of, when Bantu colonialism is depicted, it automatically down the latter implies that the Bantu has "no greater right to the land than the Europeans who took it from them." This is hogwash. Bantu expansionism is a phenomena like it or not. And it is unfortunate, and I concede that it has become fashionable for Afrikaners, Boers, Anglo African of today, to try to justifying illegally displacing, conquering Bantus and Indigenous Southern Africans back in the heyday of Apartheid, or in the European colonies and Boer Republics. I do not live by that narrative ideology, yet, I still openly support that Bantu colonialism is a phenomena. And thus should be displaced here on Wikipedia without a point of view from Apartheid apologetics and wannabe natives.

"Nonetheless, if one omits to Bantu colonialism," - the very use o the term 'bantu colonialism' shows a non-NPOV. The world is not waiting for apartheid era history, and the self serving theories of the descendants of the beneficiaries of apartheid.MrSativa (talk) 21:47, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Also whom is European?

In the context of an article on the Bantu Migration (meaning - across the African continent, not as it relates to the apartheid history of South Africa), who cares who is defined as a European. That is a question best left to the Afrikaner or Colored pages.MrSativa (talk) 21:47, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Nonetheless, if one omits to Bantu colonialism, you are then in official capacity acceding to Afrikaner Apartheid preconceptions of "beware of natives" and "Europeans only" ideology. Have a look at the list of indigenous people Africa. Tell me what do you see at Southern Africa? Hendrik Biebouw (talk) 05:08, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Have a look here and here, plus here. Hendrik Biebouw (talk) 07:05, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, the notion that there was no one living in South Africa before the arrival of the Afrikaners - Terra Nullius.

Wasn't held by anybody ever, but thanks for playing. There was also no territorial *political entity* called South Africa before 1910. Just areas that were inhabited with different densities and such that weren't. Terra Nullius doesn't mean "nobody lived there" - It means an area wasn't claimed by any sovereign entity, which means borders and a head of government. 41.147.7.209 (talk) 21:31, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Secondly, the idea that the Bantu (in South Africa) are clearly distinct from the Bushmen/Khoi, even though there is evidence of massive mixing, not only in the Coloured community, but the Xhosa, Zulu, etc. peoples. Then, the assertion that the Bushmen are the 'true' inhabitants of South Africa, and therefore everyone else is an interloper. Then, the heading "Pre-Colonial era demography" describes non-Bantu people. Colonialism only started in the 17th to 20th century, and the notion that Africa was popated by hunter gatherers before the arrival of the Europeans is clearly false. The Bantu Expansion itself is labeled "Colonisation", clearly used to draw a parallel with European colonisation. Anyway, a problem I have is that the haplogroup clearly linked to the Bantu Expanion, E1b1a, has it's origin in wet Sahara during the African Aqualithic 20-30kya, and it's near twin E1b1b spread with last wet phase of the Sahara, around 7500 BC. So where was E1b1a located during that time? Just before the Bantu Expansion or at it's beginning, Ramses III was the last great Egyptian pharaoh, and his haplogroup was E1b1a - before the Bantu Expansion. So where did they really expand from? MrSativa (talk) 18:03, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

• I have been wondering if the Bantu started expanding when their cattle evolved to tolerate the nagana pest disease which is spread by the tsetse fly. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 12:17, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Southern and Western Cape

When did the Bantu migrate into the Western and Southern Cape? There seems to be no mention of this in the article. The only sources I can find claim that it was after 1920, which I find very hard to believe.

Context: April 2008

The backgound seems rather vauge: WHERE was the source of this group (with contesting theories, perhaps), WHO were they (what makes you Bantu? in 3000BCE or now?) What was the world they came out of (was this place uninhabited, dry, wet, were there cities, were there other peoples - who differed how)? Either this is all obvious to the specialist, or someone has chopped the head off this article, and it needs to be restored. I'm hoping someone with more knowledge might adopt this important topic (I really can't). On the upside, there's a lot done, the map is good, and this could be a good article with some careful work. T L Miles (talk) 13:20, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I guess the article is just unfinished and under-referenced. It needs work. The 3000 BC date is highly dubious, 300 BC would sound more credible. For better or worse, you are Bantu if your first language is a Bantu language, and the beginning of the migration is tied to a date estimate of the ancestral Proto-Bantu language. --dab (𒁳) 10:46, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

correction, it seems 3000-2500 is a valid estimate for expansion beyond Nigeria into Cameroon, and 1500-1000 BC is the likely period of migration from West Africa towards the Congo and the Great Lakes. --dab (𒁳) 10:54, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

"For better or worse, you are Bantu if your first language is a Bantu language," - says who? Is that the apartheid era definition? Because I think we are confusing a lot of things here. First, the apartheid era 'racial classification' Bantu. Then, Bantu as someone who speaks a language from the Bantu language family. Unless you first define your terms, you can't tell whether someone belongs to some group. The whole article by the way feels like (apartheid system) 'Bantu education' for the world.MrSativa (talk) 21:34, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Removing the Zulu material

This article is best focused, I think, on the expansion of the Bantu in ancient times, taking as a terminal point the arrival of Bantu speakers in South Africa. To include the historical development of Bantu speaking peoples from ancient times to the ninteenth century seems to me to be far too ambitious for this article. I am proposing that the paragraphs relating to the Zulu and their nineteenth century expansion be deleted. I have checked on the article "Zulu Kingdom" and find that all the material used here can be found in better detail in that article, where it rightfully belongs. Beepsie (talk) 17:37, 14 February 2011 (UTC)BeepsieBeepsie (talk) 17:37, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

"To include the historical development of Bantu speaking peoples from ancient times to the ninteenth century seems to me to be far too ambitious for this article." It is part and parcel of the South African orientation. The idea is to show that Bantu arrived in South Africa late, there was no one there except the Bushmen (Terra Nullius), and therefore 10% of the population should be allowed to keep 87% of the country.MrSativa (talk) 16:13, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

OR

One of the biggest doubts is the fact that some so-classified Bantu ethnic groups do not trace their historical ancestries to Nigeria or Cameroon, or any place in West Africa, but actually place their heritage to North-Eastern Africa, in what is now Egypt and northern Sudan. Examples are the Tutsi of Rwanda, the Luhya of Kenya, the Zulu of South Africa, among many others all over the whole Eastern and Southern sides of Africa. Others still, like the Lemba actually have Israeli or Jewish history based on DNA studies conducted by various anthropological institutes including the Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis.

On the other hand, the Bantu are an agricultural people. Unlike pastoralist/ nomadic ethnicities like the Masai of Kenya, they practiced animal husbandry and produced all sorts of crops for food. They still do, except for those who are urbanized. In his 1926 PhD thesis, The Cattle Complex in East Africa, Melville J. Herskovits explores theories of power and authority revolving around the importance of cattle in East Africa.

The Bantu expansion theory posits that the proto-Bantu made their way through the great Congo rain forest. Rain forests are extremely dense and nearly impassable. On the other hand, to this very day the Congo rain forest is barely inhabited, except by members of various Pygmy ethnic groups. Plus, the Great Congo Rain forest has thousands of waterways that present severe traveling and navigating obstacles, much like the northern parts of Manitoba, Canada.

As in all migrations, human populations expand slowly, gradually spreading, as is evident in the peopling of the United States of America by Europeans and Africans, as they displaced, or absorbed the original inhabitants. It started in the East and headed West, gradually, over 400 years.

The maps that display the Bantu expansion such as the one on this page show that the expansion happened to cross right through the rain forest. Nothing grows on the rain forest floor, except for ferns and other plants that can exist on very little sunlight, as the trees are very tall. As such, the Bantu being an agricultural people, could not have migrated through the forests, because there would be no way for them to plant their crops or drive massive herds of cattle, donkeys, goats, sheep, pigs or even dogs before them, and even manage to successfully raise them in a place with little or no grasses, low-level shrubs and thickets that domesticated animals feed on.

Also, some West African ethnic groups such as the Akan of Ghana and the Wolof of Senegal have a history that states that they came from the East, in the area of the Nile River. At about the same time that the Bantus were leaving West Africa. Besides that, the Aja people of Togo and Benin are also found in Sudan. The Aja of Togo say that they came from Eastern Africa.

On the other hand, aside from the history of the Bantu peoples themselves, (which for various reasons including the sociological phenomenon commonly called racism are barely accepted or considered as nonsense,) by some British and American historians, anthropologists and linguists such as Hugh Trevor-Roper.

Aside from that, John P. Hart, in Darwin and Archaelogy writes, 'Vansina (1995) has made three cogent criticisms of the prevailing migration theory. (1) The theory assumes that only a human migration could cause the wide spread (an area of over 500,000 sq. km) of Bantu languages. Languages can spread without involving human migrations. (2) The scenario collapses one to several millenia's worth of history into a single migration event which seems doubtful if the present pattern is...the result of numerous processes and events that unfolded across Africa in this time period. (3) The tree generated by a clustering analysis of modern language similarities has been interpreted as a phylogenetic tree rather than just the parsimonious (brief) branch diagram that can explain present-day language differences.' Hart further adds, 'This type of misinterpretation is common among scholars attempting to use present similarities and differences to infer past populations and histories...'

Some historians, also do not agree on which routes the Bantu used when peopling the Eastern part of Africa, and exactly when they occurred. Also, some Bantu peoples claim that they have always been living in parts of Eastern Africa and never moved, nor migrated from elsewhere.

Because of these hindrances, the Bantu expansion theory from West Africa does not have a lot of common ground and is hotly contested. It is actually largely unknown in most Eastern African countries. School textbooks in that part of the world sometimes mention it in passing, but prefer to stick the histories passed down by their specific peoples. The expansion may have occurred for some African ethnicities, but probably across a different route, and also not everyone who speaks a Bantu language today was essentially descended from a person who was a Bantu speaker 500 years ago. Much like English today which is spoken by people who are not necessarily descended from Anglo-Saxons.

People have been inter-marrying, enslaved, conquering, assimilating, and sought refuge among people of different ethnicities all over the world for millenia. It is no different for those who speak Bantu today. These factors need to be taken into account when studying Bantu history. It is well known though, that the Bantu came from somewhere else in Africa, and transformed the Eastern part of Africa with metallurgy (such as the Haya of Tanzania who invented carbon-steel 2,000 years ago), the Bantu occupied areas that had hitherto been inhospitable for humans, established centralized monarchies such as the Baganda, Maravi, Wanga and Great Zimbabwe empires, among other artistic, architectural, technological, medicinal, and economical advances that forever changed that part of Africa.

An editor and some IPs have added the paragraph above to a section of the article titled "Criticisms of the Bantu Expansion Theory". However, most of the material is either unsourced or original research. Where it lists sources, none of them criticize the standard model of an expansion of Bantu-speaking people from a homeland in West-Central Africa except for arguably this one [1], which references Jan Vansina's long-standing questioning of the extent of the replacement of local pre-Bantu cultures, languages and people following the Bantu migrations. It basically suggests that a lot of the technologies that the Bantu are said to have introduced to the areas they migrated to were probably already in use by the peoples indigenous to those regions. Vansina more directly articulates this in his book Art history in Africa, where he indicates that there was no single migration of Bantu-speaking people from West Africa but rather a diffusion of the Bantu languages only [2]:

"The first was the huge expansion of Bantu languages throughout the southern third of the continent from the Cross River basin on the border between today's Nigeria and Cameroon to southern Africa. The expansion began some time before 500 B.C. and probably reached the eastern Cape area in the first centuries A.D. This was not a single migration of a culturally superior people, implanting a Bantu culture everywhere. There is no Bantu culture and there are no Bantu arts (Vansina 1979/1980)! It was a diffusion of languages only. At best one can recognize a substantial common heritage among Bantu speakers of southeastern Africa and portions of East Africa, where Bantu speakers seem to have carried the practices of agriculture, husbandry, metallurgy and settled life. But even that is not established beyond doubt."

However, per Roger Blench, Vansina's theory has little acceptance in the scholarly community (i.e. it is fringe), and is contradicted by other lines of evidence such as archaeology:

"Vansina (1995, 52) prefers an early date, 5000 BP, for the beginning of the Bantu expansion on the basis of glottochronology. This seems unlikely, because it puts back the genesis of Niger-Congo to a problematically early date... more radically, he claims that the Bantu expansion as a migration event is conceptually misconceived and that we should return to the "wave" models of early twentieth-century Indo-European scholars, imagining rather the large-scale propagation of language and culture among largely in situ populations. This view has not commanded widespread acceptance in the scholarly community both because of its great reliance on lexicostatistics and because it is difficult to match up with the archaeology, which does appear to support actual human migration."

Besides that source referencing Vansina's fringe views, one of the other cited refs, a genetic study [3], actually states that multiple lines of evidence support the Bantu expansion:

"We follow Cavalli Sforza et al. in noting that, although “Bantu” was originally a linguistic term, its use to define population groups can be justified on the assumption that a geographic expansion spread both the Bantu language and a group of related people... There is considerable archaeological and linguistic evidence to support an expansion of Bantu-speaking people throughout subequatorial Africa (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994)."

In short, the material is both synthesis and fringe, so it has been removed. Middayexpress (talk) 00:13, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

References

"On the other hand, aside from the history of the Bantu peoples themselves, (which for various reasons including the sociological phenomenon commonly called racism are barely accepted or considered as nonsense,) by some British and American historians, anthropologists and linguists such as Hugh Trevor-Roper. [4]" Racism and Eurocentrism are the major obstacles to a clear understanding of the ancient world and history. The need to write Africans out of history, to deny all agency when they can't, comes from the need to keep people ignorant of their real history, because it blows up the notions of white supremacy and eurocentrism, and does so quite easily. Correlation genetics and linguistics with people's own reported history should be easy, and produces lots of new information. There is a good accounting of for instance West African people's who state that their origin is in the East, in Cheikh Anta Diop's African Origin Of Civilization, Chapter 9, Peopling Of Africa From the Nile Valley. The linguistic evidence of a spread from West Africa is plentiful. However genetic evidence is that E1b1a, the haplogroup associated with the Bantu Expansion, which replaced earlier haplogroups like A, B, C, DE and D throughout most of (so-called Sub-Saharan) Africa, is an East African haplogroup. On top of that, E1b1a through Ramses III, is already present in the Nile Valley, in Egypt, in the 12th century BC. So if the Bantu expanded from West Africa, when did East African E1b1a make it to West Africa? Also, the highest concentration of E1b1a in West Africa is among non-Bantu speaking peoples. So linguistics and genetics seem to tell two different stories. MrSativa (talk) 11:34, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

I have seen no evidence or even reliable claims that E1b1a1-M2 is of East African origin at the relevant time depth. It split from East African E1b1a2-M329 around 40 000 years ago, and began to diversify about 15 000 years ago, according to Y-Full's TMRCA estimates. So if it did come from East Africa at all, sometime between say 50 000 and 10 000 years ago is most likely, long before the beginning of the Bantu expansion. Its deepest branchings so far are found in Atlantic West Africa specifically (though sampling in Africa is inadequate of course). Bantu speakers carry various branches of E1b1a1a1-V43/M180, having quite recent TMRCAs with West Africans. E-M2 is strikingly rare in Sudan and Ethiopia and not particularly elevated in Egypt either. Ramses III's haplogroup is not established to be E1b1a - it might be so, but this is only a weak prediction from STRs. High proportion of E-M2 in non-Bantu-speaking men in West Africa is obviously compatible with West African origin of Bantu, the haplogroup is much older than the language family. So in short, no, the genetic evidence fits very well with the West African origin theory. Megalophias (talk) 17:37, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Linguists

Initially archaeologists believed that they could find archaeological similarities in the ancient cultures of the region that the Bantu were held to have traversed; while linguists, classifying the languages and creating a genetic table of relationships believed they could reconstruct both material culture elements, new crops and the like.

Stop right there, buster! You've got a pretty perverse idea of what linguists do, or did. Linguists don't reconstruct material culture or crops (and, prey tell, what is and the like here...). They like to stay in their comfort zone, that is, language. When relating cultural artifacts or loan words to language and vice versa, of course we take history and geography and so on into consideration but that is never anything like our core activity. Are you even sure that you talk about linguists here, and not, say, crackpots with wild ideas and no education. 91.154.75.35 (talk) 21:57, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Pygmies

"The term "pygmy" is a racist term assigned to these people by Europeans." NPOV? What's that crappy sentence doing in there? Pygmy as such is not racist at all. Look at the etymology here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmies Anyway, the whole paragraph from "Considerable evidence..." is dubious & lacking citations. bossel (talk) 17:51, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

The whole article has a tone of South Africa's Apartheid history to it. The problem is that the apartheid government didn't teach the real history of bantu language people, because it might be too positive. They created Bantu Education instead. MrSativa (talk) 11:19, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Expansion, not colonization

Nothing in the article mentions colonies or colonists, but instead talks about expansion. I am going to edit the references to "colonization" to say "expansion."

Thanks, BCorr|Брайен 01:40, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Colonization is a form of expansion. If you go and set up a new village a little further out in the country on the frontier where there wasn't one before, that's a colony. It does not imply any particular kind of political organization; in fact you can perfectly well refer to *trees* colonizing land.Megalophias (talk) 15:22, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

It sounds more like you are trying to equate the peopling of Africa by Africans with colonisation of the African continent by Europeans. Saying they were colonists, or settlers, is loaded about presumptions based on 19th century events. MrSativa (talk) 11:21, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

It doesn't stop being colonization when the colonizers are from the same continent. It was, from the perspective of the natives, settlement by outsiders from far away, with completely different languages, customs, and ancestry, whose origins were far away. Obviously it wasn't the same as European mercantile *colonialism*, but colonization does not imply colonialism. Megalophias (talk) 05:27, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

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Article seems to have written by someone with an agenda against the Bantu expansion hypothesis

Contrary to what this article states, there is a vast amount of genetic evidence for the Bantu Expansion. For example: Periander6 (talk) 05:59, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

I concur, the edits by User:Mwenemucii grossly misrepresent the state of contemporary research. This article should be reverted to this version. --tickle me 00:54, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

I reverted the changes by Mwenemucii (and some others) wholesale. There's something wrong with this account. --tickle me 00:58, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

tickle me, the scope of your reversal seem so massive its hard to grasp what the issues are. Could we have the specific issues discussed here? As the article states "many aspects of it remain in doubt or are highly contested"... Lappspira (talk) 02:31, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

Wording like...

[...] The Niger-Congo languages that are closest in vocabulary to the Bantu family of languages is the contentious and ill-defined Bantoid languages [...] Due to this fact alone and without any other form of historical, archaeological and genetic evidence whatsoever, Bantu languages were loosely postulated to have originated in the southern regions of Cameroon and Nigeria. [...]

It is imagined, without any genetic, archaeological or concrete linguistic evidence [...] However, there is neither genetic nor archaeological evidence to support this view of Western Bantu branch migration route. [...]

by an one-issue-account is POV and OR. Mwenemucii should argue here for proposed changes. --tickle me 02:49, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

References

Supporting Mwene mucii Edits

I am not against Bantu Expansion.Bantu Expansion is a fact. The only point that is not proven by the current scientific research is where the people currently called Bantus expanded from.The idea that they expanded from Southern Cameroon and Nigeria Border was guessed from Greenberg 1972 paper on "Linguistic evidence for Bantu Expansion" which I have read many times.However,Greenberg linguistic ideas have never been supported by archaeology nor genetic evidence,though it is the " widely accepted" version of events.All genetic papers that have ever been quoted for Bantu expansion start with the words "it is believed","it is suggested" and such other speculations.However,if you trace back the "it is believed" or "it is suggested" sources,you end up at Greenberg paper.Therefore,my conclusion is that it is true that there was a Bantu expansion but other than Greenberg weak linguistic evidence,there is no conclusive genetic or archaeological trace of this expansion from Cameroon or Nigeria.The earliest trace is Urewe iron works in the Great Lakes region beginning as early as 800BC.The earliest evidence of Bantu people in Central Africa occurs in 100AD.Therefore,the only standing evidence is the one presented by Guthrie in 1967 and Sir Harry Johnson in the late 19th century. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mwenemucii (talk • contribs) 20:43, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

The references you posted in support of your arguments in the article don't support your view. They all suggest that the bantu expansion originated near the Nigeria Cameroon border, the consensus view. For example https://www.medievalworlds.net/0xc1aa5576_0x00348d17.pdf states " Since this immense biome is counted among the first territories to have been settled by Bantu speakers, it is closely linked with the initial dispersal of Bantu from its proto-Bantu homeland in northwestern Central Africa". Original research in not allowed in Wikipedia. Show me some published articles supporting the view that the Bantu expansion originated somewhere else. Periander6 (talk) 22:39, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

This is not about original research.It is about questioning the prevailing hypothesis through literature review of ALL available sources and putting it to test using the latest research work. Archaeological and genetic research does not support Cameroon theory.You can follow my sources in the article and read the articles to the conclusion,dont cherry pick what you think favors your view point.Wikipedia should not distribute innuendos clothed as "unquestionable theories",otherwise it can be hijacked not to represent the truth,but to represent some gutter information about Bantu people by people who themselves are not Bantus.As an African scientist and a Bantu for that matter,it is an insult for some people like you to continue propagating theories grounded on "believed,suggested or closely linked" lies.What is the use of using speculative words like "it is believed","it is suggested","it is closely linked" without providing data and proof?I have provided research papers from the beginning of this investigation to the today's genetic data,so I have not written any original research.The fact that the Bantu Expansion problem is not solved does not mean we keep quiet and accept wholeheartedly what is available without showing the history of the problem,its evolution and currently where it stands.African universities,especially those in sub saharan Africa are currently highly researching this area and soon enough this problem will be solved by Bantu people themselves once and for all.In the meantime,I have used all available research to give the true current position for this problem.For that,I will revert back the article to what I provided Mwenemucii (talk) 18:12, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

Mwenemucii , Wikipedia can mention the latest trends, but should not be in the front line championing for anything controversial or radically new. Lappspira (talk) 18:38, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

I agree with you :Lappspira.That is why in the article edits,I have given the history of the problem since first true scholarly attempts in 1896,its evolution over the years,the consensus in favor of Greenberg views after Malcolm death in 1972,the subsequent archaeological work that largely failed to support Greenberg theory and the current state of affairs including failed genetics attempts at finding proof.No new controversial or radical theory has been introduced.I have only made it clear that the problem is far from being solved.I have also made it clear that the current research on archaeology and genetics has failed to provide proof of the current theory.In short,I have made the article clearer and anyone reading it on Wikipedia will get a true picture of the current state of the problem. Mwenemucii (talk) 08:57, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

You have not done what you here claim to have done. Instead you have used terms like "totally discredited", with "references" formatted like

http://www.msu.ac.zw/elearning/material/temp/1329553910Vansina%201995%20linguistic%20evidence%20and%20bantu%20migrations.pdf,pg 9,11,17,18,19, https://www.medievalworlds.net/0xc1aa5576_0x00348d17.pdf,pg 10

As long as your "contributions" have such a format, they will be justly rolled back as noise, and you will be viewed as disruptive if you persist.

You can collect scholarly criticism of the Bantu migration paradigm and present it in an orderly fashion. But the burden of doing this properly is on you. Perhaps start a workpage on it and ask for help or feedback if you get stuck. --dab (𒁳) 09:59, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

In the light of this, the user in question seems to assume the qualification for contributing lies in identifying with the article subject ("only tigers can edit the 'Tiger' page! Get out non-tiger charlatans!") rather than being familiar with the expert literature. This isn't surprising at all based on recent edits, but of course such an approach to Wikipedia is a matter of administrative action against disruptive editing and should not be brought up on talkpages per WP:FORUM. --dab (𒁳) 11:41, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

Actual current mainstream view

In contrast to the edits by User:Mwenemucii, of the form

"today the Bantu migration hypothesis is totally discredited. http://www.msu.ac.zw/elearning/material/temp/1329553910Vansina%201995%20linguistic%20evidence%20and%20bantu%20migrations.pdf,pg 9,11,17,18,19,"

let me present an example of a properly formated reference to a recent relevant study on the topic:

E. Patin et al., "Dispersals and genetic adaptation of Bantu-speaking populations in Africa and North America", Science, Vol. 356, Issue 6337, pp. 543-546 (5 May 2017), DOI: 10.1126/science.aal1988.

And let me quote from the abstract, summarizing the frame of the current debate on the topic:

"We found that early Bantu speakers first moved southward, through the equatorial rainforest, before spreading toward eastern and southern Africa. We also found that genetic adaptation of Bantu speakers was facilitated by admixture with local populations"

And finally, let me summarize the gist of the debate from the article:

There are two hypotheses on Bantu migration under debate, an 'early-split' with a separation of western and eastern Bantu still within the Bantu homeland, and a 'late-split' with an initial spread of common Bantu speakers southward into the equatorial rainforest, followed by separate expansions from there. The 2017 study presentes evidence in favour of 'late-split' estimating a time of separation of eastern Bantu populations around 1,000 to 1,500 years ago, by admixture from an Afroasiatic population. Admixture from "rainforest hunter-gatherers (RHGs)" (they mean African Pygmies) in western Bantu populations was dated to about 800 years ago.

This all seems awfully specific for a hypothesis "totally discredited" in the 1990s.

In reality, the Bantu expansion paradigm is by now undisputed fact as far as these things can ever be. The timeframe and details on the routes taken are subject to tweaks and revision: Maybe they left western-central Africa 4,000 years ago and slowly expanded across central Africa for the next 3,000 years, or maybe they first moved to Angola and hung around there for a millennium or more, and afterwards completed the expansion within just 1,000 years. Or perhaps any possible scenario in between the two. Finding somebody arguing for 'early split' does not mean you have "discredited" the hypothesis, you have just found an advocate on one side of a range of possible scenarios. --dab (𒁳) 10:23, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

From what I have read Bantu expansion is sort of a fact, but details are controversial. If Bantu expansion is fully rejected then is is either extremely new or the view of a partiality of the scholarship. Lappspira (talk) 03:50, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

I just came across this, the first major study of ancient DNA in sub-Saharan Africa. It turns out that, apparently, the Bantu expansion was far worse than anyone could have imagined. It looks like it pretty much killed off about half of the continent's population. I always sort of half-knew this existed, but I had no idea this was one of the worst disasters in terms of human cost in world history. --dab (𒁳) 10:33, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Current Mainstream view not supported by facts and data

The current mainstream view is not supported by facts and data.The papers quoted above by those claiming to have "evidence" supporting current mainstream view have no data at all.I have read the papers quoted and no single piece of data is presented to support the claim and finally give a proof.

The claim that the expansion was "far worse" has nothing to do with the "source" of this expansion.

The claim that "only a tiger can write about tigers",is a lame excuse to adulterate this article with unproven innuendos.Of course,if you are not an African and a Bantu for that matter,you really care less on the truth about their origin,expansion and such details.Bantu people study is currently being done by Africans themselves,not some fridge European scientists propagating unproven theories as "truth" or facts.

All that I contributed was based on reading the full sources quoted,not just cherry picking sentences here and there. It seems some of the contributors are afraid of the impact of Bantu expansion not originating from West Africa.It is the same way those same contributors are afraid of pin pointing their own origin.Some of those contributors clothe their own origin in lies or make believe pseudo science.

I have done my edits,I will stand by them in other more important forums,however those wiki contributors and admins who were afraid of my edits can rest easy.A future African Bantu will arise to correct these lies being peddled here or may be another one will arise to invent Bantu people Wikipedia, written in a Bantu language and for Bantu speaking people.

For all the great contributors((𒁳),Lappspira,tickle) who have engaged me and adulterated my referenced edits,rest easy guys,the page is all yours and your kin to keep.The false information in the page will surely satisfy your egos but it will still continue lacking data or proof for eternity.Eventually,truth will catch up with this page,and it will do so at the alter of where Wikipedia reputation will be slaughtered and sacrificed by Africans affected by this false information about some false unproven expansion from West Africa. Mwenemucii (talk) 20:53, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Just in case anyone wanted to edit a Bantu Wikipedia, there are at least 15 (eyeballing the list), Kiswahili Wikipedia not surprisingly has the most content. Megalophias (talk) 03:19, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

Minor clarification needed

The first sentence uses the phrase "intrinsically spread". As far as I know, this is not a standard use of "intrinsically". Is this a technical term in archaeology?Rscragun (talk) 02:39, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Maps?

I would like to see a map of cultures in Africa before and after the event. Sea Captain Cormac 12:44, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

Ramses III

I've only come across the topic by chance, have little interest in it other than general curiosity, but I see it's hotly discussed. I placed Ramses III in the "See also" paragraph, and an anonymous editor removed it quite promptly asking for evidence. I had read something in a reliable source, otherwise I wouldn't have made the edit, but it's eihjt days since and I can't remember what it was. Anyway, it all seems to hark back to this study:

Hawass, Zahi & Ismail, Somaia & Selim, Ashraf & N Saleem, Sahar & Fathalla, Dina & Wasef, Sally & Gad, Ahmed Zakaria & Saad, Rama & Fares, Suzan & Amer, Hany & Gostner, Paul & Gad, Yehia & Pusch, Carsten & Zink, Albert. (2012). Revisiting the harem conspiracy and death of Ramesses III: anthropological, forensic, radiological, and genetic study. BMJ (Clinical research ed.). 345. e8268.
A detailed, large summary is to be found here:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233941674_Revisiting_the_harem_conspiracy_and_death_of_Ramesses_III_anthropological_forensic_radiological_and_genetic_study

Relevant quotation (I only removed reference to tables set between brackets by the authors, since it disturbs the fluency of the text and the URL allows whoever is interested to look it up by themselves):
"Genetic kinship analyses revealed identical haplotypes in both mummies [Ramses III and "unknown man E"]; using the Whit Athey’s haplogroup predictor, we determined the Y chromosomal haplogroup E1b1a. The testing of polymorphic autosomal microsatellite loci provided similar results in at least one allele of each marker. Although the mummy of Ramesses III’s wife Tiywas not available for testing, the identical Y chromosomal DNAand autosomal half allele sharing of the two male mummies strongly suggest a father-son relationship."

I leave it to you to figure out the reliability of the study and its relevance to the topic. Good luck, Arminden (talk) 14:51, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Zulu Empire

Why do we have a section on this? What does it have to do with the main topic? Megalophias (talk) 16:55, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Terra nullius and the Bantu expansion

A few commenters have raised this above, but the idea that the Bantu expansion was contemporaneous with Dutch expansion into the interior is a common trope that's widespread online, although it dates back a lot further.[4] Should a section be added to cover this claim? Park3r (talk) 03:29, 9 October 2023 (UTC)