Archaeological culture · c. 3000 BCE – 500 CE (all areas approximate)

Bantu expansion (approximate)

The spread of Bantu-speaking peoples, with farming, pottery and later iron, from a homeland around the Cameroon–Nigeria borderlands across much of central, eastern and southern Africa. Many scholars see a western stream through or along the rainforest reaching central Angola, and an eastern stream reaching west of Lake Victoria by about 500 BCE, then spreading south to reach South Africa by about 300 CE.

It happened over many centuries, not as a single migration.

See Bantu expansion (approximate) on the map in 300 →

On the map

3000 BCE – 500 CE