African Transformations

In the year 1500 bce or so, Africa consisted of (1) the Egyptian world along the Nile, (2) a culture of village-based agriculturalists and herders that stretched below the Sahara almost across the entire continent, (3) cattle herders in the area of Sudan and Ethiopia, and, (4) more recently, camel traders and herders in the deserts of Tunisia and Algeria. Everyone else, whether in the forests of the Congo or the savannas of South Africa, were First Society people. But the cultural geography of Africa was to change considerably when the agro-pastoralists, known as the Bantu, began to expand southward around the rainforests to the open pasture-lands of the south (Figure 15.1).

The Bantu expansion began around 1000 bce, took on momentum around 500 ce, and reached the southern tip of Africa around 1000 ce. It has parallels with the great agricultural expansion into Europe that took place between 5000 bce and 3000 bce as well as with the great expansion of rice cultures in Southeast Asia that took place at around the same time. Like the European expansion, the world of the Bantu involved a combination of agriculture, animal tending, and metallurgy. Similarly, the Bantu expansion was not a single event involving just one people. As it progressed across space and time it splintered into numerous variations. The Bantu knew what they were looking for, namely Alfisol soil, which is high in nutrients and a prime agricultural soil. This type of soil characterized their sub-Saharan homeland, and as they traveled south they also had to travel to the east, since the western part of Africa has largely sandy soil, not particularly well suited to agriculture. It can be found in eastern South Africa, the homeland of the Zulu.

But it was not the only expansion. Some Bantu went to the western parts of south Africa and, like the Himba, became more cattle-centric. There was also the Nilotic expansion from the southern reaches of the Nile, the ancient sub-Saharan homelands of cattle breeders, into Sudan and Kenya. Here, people were, in essence, following the traces of a different soil, known as ver-tisol. With a high clay content, it is perfect for grass and savanna and stretches from southern Sudan into western Ethiopia and down into northern Kenya. People from southern Sudan also moved west and were the progenitors of the Garunsi and the Dogon and other agriculturalists in the sub-Saharan regions. These various movements in a great arc around the rainforest and had a domino effect that reaches into the modern era.