The Ancients - The Bantu Expansion

Episode Date: February 19, 2023

The Bantu expansion was one of the most significant cultural events in human history. Sometime between 3,000 and 2,000 years ago in Sub-Saharan Africa, massive numbers of Proto-Bantu speaking peoples spread out around the continent from an unknown central location. As they moved into new areas, the Bantu brought with them their language, culture, and technology - displacing or absorbing many non-Bantu speaking groups of hunter-gatherers & pastoralists. Today, Bantu languages are spoken by over 400 million people. So why aren't these events more widely known?In this episode, Tristan is joined by historian Luke Pepera to help untangle the mysteries of this key event in both African and World History. But with limited archaeological sources, how do we know what really happened - and what role can genetic evidence play in solving this mystery?The Senior Producer was Elena GuthrieThe Assistant Producer was Annie ColoeEdited by Aidan LonerganFor more Ancients content, subscribe to our Ancients newsletter here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - enter promo code ANCIENTS for a free trial, plus 50% off your first three months' subscription.To download, go to Android > or Apple store >

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode, well, we're going to ancient Africa. We're talking about one of the most significant sets of migrations in human history. It's called the Great Bantu Expansion. Now before researching for this podcast episode today I had never really even heard of this series of migrations and I was blown away. I was blown away completely in today's episode because they are so fascinating. They are so important and they're also so seismic.

This evidently wouldn't have just been a very peaceful set of migrations. There would have been bloodshed. You see metals at the heart of it. You see different communities emerging all across central, southern, eastern, western Africa. It's fascinating and I know you're going to absolutely love today's episode because our guest is none other than Luke Pepra. Luke, he's been on the podcast a couple of times before to talk about the Kingdom of Kush, but also attitudes towards race in the Greco-Roman world. It was a pleasure to let Luke talk through the story of the Great Bantu expansion, something that he knows so much about. So without further ado, to talk about this fascinating moment from human prehistory, from our ancient history, here's Luke.

Luke, great to have you back on the pod, buddy. Yeah, great to be here. Thank you for listening. You're more than welcome. Always a pleasure having you on the podcast. And this time, the Bantu migration, extraordinary moment in Africa's ancient history, something I knew absolutely nothing about.

And it seems that it's not very much focused on today in the English speaking world. Yeah, I mean, it, the Bantu migration is such an instrumental part of African history because the Bantu are one of the major ethnic groups in Africa, especially in Eastern and Southern Africa. And over a period of, you know, a few thousand years beginning, maybe three to four thousand years ago, they just dominated the cultures of Southern Africa and Eastern Africa. And they've changed them, I mean, so much over that period of time to what we have today. But it's incredible because it was so different from what existed in Africa beforehand. So it was like a revolution. It

completely revolutionized most of the cultures of the continent and especially Southern and Eastern Africa. And actually, I think it's important also for the rest of the world, because obviously you had migrations of people then afterwards out of africa and people were coming to africa and that intermixing as well so it affected also the ancestry of peoples and other places when either africans the bounty themselves went out and intermixed with others or when people came to africa especially eastern and southern africa and mixed with them there. Well, how far back in time are we going, therefore, with this migration? Yeah, I mean, about 2000 BC is when people think it sort of began. But I think bounty migration is a bit of a misnomer because it's not one migration.

It's actually a series of potentially hundreds of migrations because it's over a period of, yeah, it's over a period of like 4,000, 3,000 to 4,000 years. So, but yeah, that's about where it starts. So what kinds of sources do we therefore have available? You have no sources, Tristan, to be perfectly honest with you. I mean, I'm making up as I go right now, no. Okay, to be fair,

what's great actually about the bounty migration is because there are not really any written sources, but because the scholars have always tried to build up a picture of what exactly happened, you can't look at just one thing. One thing doesn't tell you enough. So you have to look at linguistic, archaeological, genetic. Those are like the main three.

Linguistic especially has been useful, because when the Bantu moved to different places, they were basically in these places, in the places they moved to across southern and eastern Africa, there were lots of groups of hunter-gatherers. And then when the Bantu sort of moved into these places obviously those hunter gatherers took on their language but the bantu languages that are now spoken then have like hints of the hunter gatherers languages as well because they took like a few words so you can basically chart where they moved by looking at how much the language has changed over a certain part so

obviously if it's changed a lot you're going to a certain part, then you think, OK, so these people, they must have come here later than they were here. Because this is closer to their original language. Because the Bantu migrations sort of started from like modern day Cameroon. So it's like West Africa. That's like the origin, where the Bantu were before they moved so basically the languages now the spoken with like a bantu heritage that are furthest away from the ones spoken in like west africa what you say is okay then these people obviously were a lot later down the line they must have migrated to other places first before they got here so linguistic is huge it's sort of a similar thing with genetic and archaeological as well because you're comparing the pottery for example of later bantu groups to the ones that were made by the bantu groups not

just of the past but also where they originally were in west africa um so then you're also looking at who they mixed with so you can say okay they're these distinctive bantu features but then we're also seeing features from other places from the peoples of the cultures of sudan like the ancient sudanese or you know hunter gatherers who potentially lived in east africa so then you can sort of build up a picture of where different groups might have moved but then again it's several groups so if you for example they're starting off in like cameroon and west africa and then one group moves and then they change in the midst of their movement and then they go somewhere else i mean it's like how different is that group which would change in the middle from the original group anyway can you even consider them bantu

because uh you know they might have taken more features from another place so they have a tiny bit of bantu heritage but they're not bantu anymore it's yeah hopefully that you've basically laid out your research conundrums that you've had speaking about it now i was like hopefully that sort of makes sense i think the key thing to take away is that there were successive migrations but what's important to remember is that as different bounty groups are moving through eastern and southern africa so they start off in west cameroon there are some who go down the atlantic coast towards sort of angola there's some who go east towards kenya and tanzania as they're moving towards these places again over centuries they are interacting with different groups of hunter

gatherers they are taking different aspects of their cultures their unique cultures and new cultures are basically being formed over a period of centuries so that's what's key to remember about the bounty migration and you know i'm writing about in in the book that i'm currently working on, Motherland, and, you know, it's actually in a chapter about diversity. Because, you know, what I'm saying is that what is interesting about the Bantu migration is that it demonstrates to you the diversity of the African continent. Because, yes, all these people of Bantu have Bantu origins, but because they mixed with so many different groups of hunter-gatherers over the course of centuries, they all became so different. So they all became really diverse, even though they all have Bantu heritage.

It's so interesting when you compare it to other migrations from that far in the past. My mind instantly goes to the Beaker migrations and the Beaker people. Oh, yeah. Named after their iconic style of pottery, so you can trace where they go. So that pottery, you do have that pottery with Bantu as well. So you use that as archaeological evidence also alongside the genetics to get an idea yeah exactly yeah so the pottery but then also um iron working as well because something that's the bantu accredited basically with spreading

iron working and also farming like cattle farming culture across southern and eastern africa but it might be that for example so i mentioned how there were some bantu groups who went down the atlantic coast and there are some who went east just above the Central African rainforest and they ended up in Kenya and Tanzania. When that second group that I mentioned were in Kenya and Tanzania, they interacted with the ancient Sudanese who already had better experience of ironworking and then also farming in particular and, you know, cattle farming culture. and then also farming in particular and you know cattle farming culture it's potentially from them that those bantu groups became more proficient in iron working and cattle working and then going back to pottery that's where they developed a distinctive pottery wear which was used to help us trace their movement but then what happens after that is that some of those bantu the bantu who mixed with the central sudanese around kenya and Tanzania. So this was around the Great Lakes region. So maybe it might be helpful to label those guys, the Bantu

who mixed with the Central Sudanese in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes Bantu. And some of those Great Lakes Bantu, some go sort of south and east, but some go back west and they meet the Atlantic Bantu. So they go back west to Angola. That's the first group. Exactly. Sorry, this was the very first group who just went straight south and they meet in northern Angola and create a new group called the Angolan Bantu and then they move southwards. So the reason I mentioned that example is that what can also happen is that you have a Bantu group mixed with, for example, in the Great Lakes, the Central Sudanite group, they form a new group is formed and then that group splits off so some go west some go east and then they mix with different peoples during their travels and new groups are

made it's not like all of those people went for example west some might have stopped off halfway a quarter of the way and you know interacted with the hunter-gatherers in that region and formed their own unique culture so you're basically just having all these like nodes like these different cultures with the migration just popping up all over the place or developing their own unique culture so you're basically just having all these like nodes like these different cultures with the migration just popping up all over the place or developing their own unique culture and that is a testament for example to the diversity of african peoples because there's been so much migration and mixing and so many different groups who have emerged in africa for so long that's what can give rise to such a diversity of peoples even when a massive or even when like a series of migrations by one group of people occurs.

And you mentioned all this encountering hunter-gatherer groups. Yeah. So right from the start of the Bantam migration, the people who are moving, who are migrating, are they already settlers? Are they already industrialists, farmers? are they already industrialists farmers they are they're sort of small-scale farmers because part of the reason that they they seem actually to have been living at least you know some of them are sedentary lifestyle because part of the reason or at least one of the reasons some people have put forward for why they moved was basically like a population overload so before they moved well a long time before maybe let's say about maybe 10 000 years ago you know within the last 15 years or we have the advent of the holocene so before they have the younger dry

period which is like cold and dry and you know erratic weather and then you have the holocene which is what we've been living in for you know thousands of years which is a lot more stable you know that's why we have you know the seasons and it's wetter there's more rainfall so the bantu in cameroon were enjoying this new environment this new change of climate and you know we're sedentary where must have been farming to some extent but what happens is that because they could feed more people after they'd got a hang of the seasons etc and we're growing more crops i think there wasn't as much animal husbandry but you know we're growing crops and then able to feed their populations and their populations increase and then some people are

sort of encouraged to move away because of um if they feel either there might be you know pastures anew or there might be issues with scarcity after a certain point after a certain break point or there were some groups for example who were living in cameron who were mainly they were sedentary but they weren't farmers because obviously with the advent of the holocene when crops became more abundant because beforehand obviously you'd gather you'd get you'd forage in an area but you would take all the resources that were abundant, because beforehand, obviously, you'd gather, you'd forage in an area, but you would take all the resources that were there in terms of food, and then you'd have to move to a different place in order to take the resources there.

But because there was greater abundance after the Holocene, people moved a lot less. So they were foraging in certain places for longer. But some deciding to move southwards for more land. And then what's also key is that just before the Bantu moved as well is that the Central African, there was also climate change affecting the northern border of the Central African rainforest and it became savannah land. So it was easier to penetrate.

Central African rainforest is like really dense. It's definitely not easy. I mean, I know this even with some Ashanti, the Akan. Our historical narrative, for example, involves us cutting down the forest of now what is modern day Ghana and clearing the land in order to be able to live there but it's just like dense forest land in some parts of you know so the central african rainforest is dense but climate change just beforehand leads to the northern border becoming savannah land so there is actually space to move southward which is why some bantu do and then it

also clears up just on the West African coast, which is why there's also an easier path in order to move southward. So that seems to be one of the reasons, maybe, why certain Bantu groups move. You know, I mean, always imagine, for example, doing like, how would you represent this, for example, if you're doing it as like a TV drama? Because I think what's really interesting is that we talk about the Bantu migration, but then there must have been individuals, people like us, maybe making a decision or falling out with you know it could have been something so personal you know it's just individuals or leaders leaders of different bounty groups who maybe have fallen out or they want more resources or you know to move their people somewhere and they actually

just make that decision as individuals to be like okay we're going to go to a different part and i think that's it's unfortunate that because it's something that we've lost not having of course any written documents that's what might have brought that out a bit more because when you're going by the archaeology and linguistics and the genetics you get a general sense of the movement but it all feels you know very impersonal very group-like and actually it might have just been a great figure maybe again just all like alizade the great i figure like literally just one person making the decision to move as opposed to a whole group of people making you know a group decision to go somewhere else it's like a noah kind of thing well i guess like a moses kind of thing exactly i mean it could have been like that you know what i mean so you're it's yeah that's

definitely something we lose not having the um the written stuff maybe if we just take a step back because i appreciate there's so many different strands of this migration. You've explained the causes of what may well have caused it. And you mentioned these various groups there, Group 1 down the Atlantic coast, Group 2 to the Great Lakes. Yes, yeah. If we focus on Group 1 first of all,

what do we know or what do you think is the story most likely for this group, which goes down the Atlantic seaboard? Yeah, I think that one is a search for more resources more land i think i mean there are it seems or you know the change in climate is it seems encouraging people to you know forcing or encouraging whatever it is people to live in a different way there was just pressure population pressure which forced other groups to move to different places. And why they decided to go down the Atlantic first,

I don't know if it's, or, you know, down that part, rather than going east again, it could have just been one person saying it's more sensible to go down via a waterway than to try and traverse the Sahel, like go across to East Africa. You know, I don't know. But in terms of the impetus to move, that for me is the reason.

I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb. And this month on Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, I'm dusting down my magnifying glass to investigate some of history's most notorious murders and brutal crimes. Was it a quarrel, or was the brilliant playwright Christopher Marlowe actually murdered in that Deptford Inn? Was Amy Dudley, wife of Elizabeth I's favourite Robert, pushed down a flight of stairs to her death. Were the Guise, that great French family, actually bloodthirsty murderers,

who secured their power through ruthlessness and violence? And what's the truth about the Hungarian noblewoman who allegedly killed hundreds of young women? Join me, but not on an empty stomach, for not just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. And then if we therefore focus on the Great Lakes and this next migration or migrations or I don't know, you know, however it formed to the Great Lakes. Do we think that there's differences there when you see those people going eastwards? I mean, talk me through what you think is happening there with this Bantu emergence at the Great Lakes. Yeah, of course, new paths open up thanks to climate change, which is affecting, for example, the Central African rainforest. So, I mean, it is a risk, but there is maybe actually a sense of new opportunity in that direction because it's something that maybe wasn't as easy to explore beforehand. Also, I think it's important to think maybe about actually how the communication channels between East and West, how they might have affected this.

Because one of the things that's thought is that the people in those ancient Sudanese who I mentioned earlier, who knew about ironworking, they might have, for example, got that knowledge. Maybe from Meriwi, actually, which was an ironworking center. So again, this is Kush. But then also potentially from ancient modern day Nigeria, so the Nok, who were known as ironworkers as well. So like iron crafting in West Africa has also been a big deal. So if we say that, for example, knowledge of iron working was spread from West to East Africa, then there is obviously some kind of communication. I mean, I think this is in the slightly later stages of the migration, but then there is actually contact then between West and East, which might have led to a flow of information that would have encouraged then those people to go East rather than go South if you know we recognize that actually that path has opened up but then also there is knowledge about actually

what's going on there and you know that knowledge might have something in it that's attractive to those people who decide to go East rather than go South down the Atlantic and as you mentioned so following then it gets a bit complicated with the dividing up into various different groups. Yeah, I mean, they're dividing before that. I mean, I just say, this is again just a general sum. But then, you know, there are some, for example, who even or even might have stayed on the Atlantic

because obviously it depends on the evidence. I mean, sometimes as archaeologists and the policy, we'd be loathe to say, okay, a group remained here if we don't find, for example, evidence of people living there, you know, pottery or, you know, middens and all that type of stuff. But, you know, it's not to say sources, it's like the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. Like people could have still stopped on the way

as opposed to going all the way to Angola. And similarly for going across East, there might have been some people who stopped on the way as opposed to going all the way to angola and similarly for going across east there might have been some people who stopped on the way quarter way two-thirds of the way instead of carrying on deciding to remain in settlements with you know hunter-gatherers who lived on the route as opposed to reaching the great lake so that you know sort of dividing in those two is basically to try to explain how they get across the entire continent but this is leaving out obviously some of the people on the way who might have stopped and decided to remain with other you know with hunter-gatherer settlements on the way because it's not evidence therefore that when the

bantu spread east or spread south all the people that they come into contact with become farmers to become pastures some also retained the hunter-gatherer lifestyle exactly well i mean so what's interesting is actually the ones who go down the, I mean, the major group, as it were, the group that we're sort of following, you know, accepting and leaving out those who might or might not have stayed, we're not really sure. Those ones who end up in Angola after going down the West Coast, they seem to be mainly sort of foraging still.

They're not really ironworking and ironworking farmers. But actually when the great lakes when those ones come and join them in angola they basically introduce to them the iron working and so because those people the people who'd gone east had picked up this new technology by interacting with the sudanese this is something that again makes them a unique banzai group a different banzai group so when they reunite and this is like several hundred years later as you think again over a period of 3 000 years so when they again reunite and this is like early first millennium a.d then the bantu went down the atlantic coast and ended up in angola they actually learn iron working and farming techniques from

those who came from the great lakes and obviously the Great Lakes people who learned it from the Sudanese who'd learnt it potentially from the Nigerians and this is a basic simplification of what might have been going on but I think what's interesting is that again it shows you the level of contact the level of migration and in fact it's you know what again is brought to get across in the migration is actually how does a culture how does an iron working farming cultures is the question that archaeologists in particular and anthropologists are interested in is how relatively quickly does an iron working farming culture with a distinctive portion etc spread from one place across the entire continent in a matter

of a few thousand years the iron workingworking is really, really interesting. So what you're saying, once it gets to the Great Lakes, of all of these Bantu cultures, these Bantu peoples, ironworking is most prominent in that area. Yeah, it seems to be the Bantu there learn it from the Sudanese, you know, the ancient Sudanese. And then, you know, again, a few hundred years later, when they join, because what's really interesting is that obviously the ones who, let's say the ones who go down the Atlantic coast and end up in northern Angola, and the ones who go first to the Great

Lakes, and, you know, learn the techniques and then come back west, they have the same ancestors, you know, they're all the same, their heritage, but over the period of those few hundred years where they took their alternate paths, when they reunite again, they're actually different. You know, they're completely different. There are the foraging, more stone-using Atlantic Coast Bantu, and then there's the farming iron-using Great Lakes Bantu, who also probably have a high, you know, there are probably more of them because their farming techniques have given them an edge in terms of population size. They might actually be militarily more proficient because they're using iron. They're using better weaponry. They might be technologically more advanced. You know, one thing that does interest me is actually how might that interaction have played out because

they have the same heritage, but one might imagine that actually the Great Lakes Bands are the ones who are using iron and, you know, no farming, sort of see themselves maybe as being superior to the ones who came down the Atlantic coast who are still main you know foraging mainly and using stone tools so the fact that these two parts even though they have the same origins these two parts have transformed them or their descendants rather because again it's their ancestors who moved and then you know as you know they're the descendants or you know people who came later on who um became the great lakes bantu the ones who learned you know the techniques etc but you know they're completely different and then you know maybe even the stone the atlantic coast bantu

the ones who are still stone using etc are looking at the great lakes bantu and thinking that these are you know these are more advanced people and actually how that interaction might have played out because the different Bantu groups moving across and interacting with different kinds of hunter-gatherers I mean some of them might have been rife with conflict some of them might have been conquests and again this is where the lack of written evidence about individuals and about particular people plays a part because actually if there was you know written stuff we might have been talking about battles like a series of battles between hunter-gatherers you know sort of what we have for

example about let's say in america the expansion western then their conflicts with the native americans it might have actually been like a similar thing but bantu's you know with other hunter-gatherers but we don't have that but some might have been peaceful some might have been rife with conflict others might have been like a combination of the two but then it's interesting to think about what then the nature then of the interaction between the atlantic coast bantu and the great lakes bantu if that was for example the great lakes bantu conquering and imposing actually upon them an iron working farming culture or if it was the atlantic coast bantu seeing that and saying you know we want to be like that and then adopting that culture, you know, sort of becoming assimilated into it, how that might have worked.

Such a great topic, you know, for you is anthropology, background, going so back into ancient history as well, you know, the mystery still surrounding it. To focus in on something like the Bantu migration, try get your head around it must be such a difficult but enjoyable task at the same time for sure I mean like I said the only thing I decry is the lack of you know I would have really loved to know about the individuals who were key I mean over a period of 7,000 years but again it was people just like us you know our families you know brothers and sisters I mean it's very very personal definitely very enjoyable and what's nice is actually seeing the the different benefits of the different types of evidence that is used and actually you know the impact as well that it's had on the continent and on the peoples of the continent and the different

cultures that comprise the continents so i mean definitely a very very enjoyable well highlight for us what the significance the real significance of the bantu migration is for africa's ancient history and i guess therefore af Africa's history in general. Yeah, so I mean, it's interesting because the iron working becomes such a distinctive feature. You know, that's when afterwards we're entering then and then the dawn of the Iron Age. So for example, places like Zimbabwe, and I think it helps actually with the development of, quote unquote, slightly more sophisticated or advanced societies, for example, in southern and like southern Central Africa. So Gray Zimbabwe, for example, is one good example, because

the cattle and similar with East Africa as well, but you know, cattle is such like an important part of the economy. And obviously, that's something that's introduced because of the Bantu migration to that region. Iron and iron working and iron tools is also important. And, you know, iron forging, again the the impacts that has on um for example helping a society become more military proficient and efficient and then the conquest which leads to the formation of these bigger kingdoms so it's the only thing is i think it's actually maybe a helps the transformation in southern and Eastern Africa from potentially more egalitarian, small hunter-gathering groups into essentially these massive centralized farming wealth-focused

kingdoms in South Central Africa. I mean, it changes the nature of the societies. For example, they're more unequal, they're more stratified, some places like Great Zimbabwe. So it, yeah, I mean mean it changes the nature of the societies in those regions i mean maybe if not for the amount of migration the fact that this ironwork reforming culture has took over and took over so quickly more peoples in southern central africa might be like for example um you know the khoisan today which are one group like their hunter gathering group society has not changed for at least 100,000 years. They live in small hunter-gathering

bands, and they're people that archaeologists and anthropologists love to look at to understand how ancient, anatomically modern human hunter-gatherers might have lived 40,000, 60,000 years ago. They managed to escape the effect of that, but other places didn't. For example, in South Africa, modern-day South Africa, and talk about the nation here And then in Zimbabwe on the Swahili coast places like Kenya and remodeling a Kenya in Tanzania, etc If not for the Mantic migration It might be that actually all those hunter-gatherer groups would have is this it as they are today and you wouldn't have had the kingdoms that emerged later on in the medieval period

It's not like kingdom of Benin and so on and so forth? Well, Benin, yeah, I mean- What kingdoms are we talking about? Okay, so we're talking about the kingdoms of, for example, Mapungubwe, K2, Great Zimbabwe. I mean, what was important again for these was the trade with Arabian Persia, but we're also potentially talking about Kilwa, Safala, so those places in Eastern Africa as well. So because all those

polities in Southern and Eastern Africa develop in quite a distinctive way, in ways that we're a bit more familiar with now, and have aspects, cultural or societal aspects with which we're more familiar now, international trade, elites and the gathering of wealth, luxurious displays of wealth especially. I mean, Great Zimbabwe is quite distinctive in this and they have these massive stone walls which are used and then the elites basically built these massive stone walls, but they built them almost like concentric stone walls and then they were in the middle and then people outside the stone walls, those who weren't of the elite class, were sort of kept outside

the main elite structure and divided from the elites by the Stone Wars. So those kind of features of society, I think, come about, or at least are accelerated because of the Bantu migration and the way in which it changes the nature of societies because of the innovations that it introduces. It is so interesting how different, you mentioned that diversity earlier, how much of a difference it made one group going south, the other group going east. And how that influenced their descendants, didn't it? Yeah. It's fascinating, isn't it? Yeah, it all depends on with whom they came into contact, right? Because I put a lot of emphasis on this, again, you know, I don't know how accurately,

but the fact that the ones who went east met with these Central Sudanese speakers, so they became iron workers and farmers at least a lot faster if at all because of them and then happened to introduce it to because some of them happened to go back west happened to introduce it to those people went to angola and then they learned this and then they took it south again if some of them hadn't gone west they might not have developed the ironworking. So it is that this culture spreads quite rapidly. But I think what is key is that it seems that everybody, whether by force, whether they want to or not, adopts the ironworking farming culture. I mean, it's almost like a societal survival of the fittest is that the thing which gives you an edge over other societies,

i.e. our working and farm, is the thing that everybody ends up adopting because it is the thing that will give you an edge. So for example, the reason other groups either don't stay hunter-gatherers or forced not to be hunter-gatherers is because it's like if you want to compete, if you want to survive, you have to be a farmer and you have to use iron.

You can't be foraging and using stone. That seems to be the way things happen, which is why then, wherever anybody with the ironworking and farming goes, they end up spreading that culture, as opposed to being stopped. Although it does happen in some parts where you sort of stop, and then actually there's a regression. So the people who are using ironworking and farming actually go back to the stone using. But that doesn't seem to be the general story. It is generally moved to a place ironworking

farming culture is spread or adopted those people who learn it move to another place the cycle kind of repeats itself it is a testament to the importance and efficiency of that culture and then obviously everything that comes after that and builds after that because you know with that and then with ironworking and then you know with uh farming increased population size you know farming surpluses stratified societies i mean it completely the way that then afterwards societies develops into what they are today is completely different so yeah it would be interesting if that didn't happen and we just you know people that would just remained hunter gatherers oh there you go there you go i mean last question but i'm guessing this one's still shrouded in mystery do we know how the bantu migration kind

of peters out how it ends or do we just get a rough idea of how far it extends to and then yeah i mean yeah i mean it almost seems to be throughout basically where they have nowhere else left to go because it reaches like the far reaches of the continent they get all the way to the eastern coast you know go across most of and almost to the end of the south of the continent, they get all the way to the eastern coast, you know, go across most of and almost to the end of the south of the continent. And it almost peters out somewhat naturally when there are almost no more new groups, as it were, to encounter that then the adoption of ironworking and farming slows. So that's what seems to be the case. Well, this has been incredibly eye-opening, especially for someone like me who knew absolutely nothing about this

before our chat today and a bit of research beforehand. You write all about this and so much more in your book. It's a bit far away still, isn't it? Yeah, it's still coming out. But we can, the most patient amongst us, we are awaiting with bated breath for when that's released in a year or so's time.

It's been a pleasure talking to you. And I hope that listeners who also might not have known anything about the anti-migration have picked up a little something from what I've said. And we'll look forward to the book that I'm writing in order to learn a bit more. But then also we'll hopefully be prompted to do a tiny bit of their own research in order to find out a bit more about it. And also to say to not be daunted because no one exactly knows what happens but the key thing to remember that about this migration in particular is that it is just you know this rapid spread of this culture iron working and farming culture across yeah southern eastern africa so yeah i hope people are interested and i hope they

take a look at more of it well there we go and it just goes me to say then luke thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast Luke, thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast today, amigo. Thank you very much, Tristan. It's a pleasure. Well, there you go. There was Luke Pepera returning to the ancients to explain all things the great Bantu expansion.

I hope you enjoyed the episode today. And if you did, well, you know what you can do. It's simple. It's easy. It helps us a lot you'll have my eternal gratitude too you can leave us a lovely rating on apple podcast on spotify wherever you get your podcast from it really helps us as we continue to get bigger to get better to grow the podcast to reach more and more people to share these amazing stories from our distant past with you

and to give the spotlight to figures such as Luke and all our other incredible guests to shine lights on these awesome areas of our distant past. Help us as we conquer the ancient history media world. That is my secret objective too and I want you on board for our new ancient history media world. That is my secret objective too. And I want you on board for our new ancient history world order. So come on, get on board.

Leave us a lovely rating. You know you want to. Anyways, that's enough rambling on from me. I will see you in the next episode.