New linguistic evidence about the classification of the Bantu languages does not support the current view that these languages spread as the result of a massive migration or ‘expansion’ by its speakers. Rather the present geographic distribution of Bantu languages is the outcome of many complex historical dynamics involving successive dispersals of individual languages over a time span of millennia and involving reversals as well as successes. This is as true for eastern and southern Africa, where a close correlation between the archaeological evidence documenting the diffusion of basic food-related technologies, including metallurgy and the spreading of Bantu languages has become an axiom, as it is elsewhere. The linguistic evidence concerning the dispersal of Bantu languages in these regions of Africa is completely incongruent with the archaeological record. The existing Bantu expansion hypothesis must be totally abandoned. The scrapping of the hypothesis will make room for more realistic and quite different interpretations and research hypotheses. For example, it follows that the local or regional contribution of speakers of other languages, autochthons and others, to the development of later cultures and societies was probably considerably greater than has hitherto been acknowledged and that the continuities in historical dynamics of all sorts between the Bantu-speaking parts of Africa and areas further north and west are greater than has been hitherto realized.

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Linguistic studies are now advanced enough to allow us to sketch how Central Africa was settled by farmers who spoke western Bantu languages. From the second millenium B.C. onward, yarn-growers with neolithic tools spread in the rain-forests of the Cameroons. By adapting repeatedly to different environments they expanded over the whole forest area and also over the savannas and woodlands further south. These people were in search of optimal environments, quite willing to move to settle in favoured locales. Although they multiplied there, their expansion over such huge areas meant that their settlements remained very thinly scattered over Central Africa.A thickening of settlement would only occur when new crops – the banana in the rain-forest, cereals in more open lands – allowed farmers to settle in most places. Iron-smelting was less important here than these new crops. These induced further population growth, densities rose and movements in search of the best unknown lands ceased. If the first settlement had only moderately inconvenienced the autochthones, the thickening of population led in time to their absorption, dependence on villagers, or emigration in search of ever-decreasing empty areas.

The structure of indigenous trade in Central Africa makes it necessary to distinguish between three different types of trade. There is first the local trade from village to village within a given population. The goods exchanged are generally specialized products from local industry, and the exchange comes about because some villages possess supplies of raw materials which are not available to others, e.g. pottery clay, or because they are inhabited by specialists such as smiths or woodcarvers who are not available in others. This type of trade is conducted in local markets, and generally speaking, currency of some sort is in use. It is still alive today, and one can assume that it is very old, since such a system shows little dynamism. The necessities remain the same; the organization is simple and efficient.

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