The Bantu Expansion
Another rapid cultural expansion occurred in Africa, among those who spoke Bantu languages, and speakers of Bantu languages -- derived originally from a language spoken in a tiny part of West Africa -- occupy about half of modern Africa south of the Sahara. These speakers of Bantu languages, for the most part, grew up in cultures where a Bantu language was passed on to them by their forebears.
Languages are often adopted from neighboring tribes, so not all of the Bantu speakers are necessarily direct descendants of people who spoke the original proto-Bantu language three thousand years ago, when the Bantus first began to spread out from their tiny homeland, most likely in the southwestern corner of present-day Cameroon, near the Nigerian border.
Even today, many small-stature people whose ancestors hunted and gathered in the Jungles of central and western Africa are adopting (or have adopted) the languages of the Bantus that trade with them and hire them.
Even so, the Bantu expansion is remarkable, and it is all the more remarkable when we consider that it was stopped dead in its tracks between 400 AD and 1000 AD by an early bubonic plague epidemic that killed off most of the Bantus.
The original Bantus started spreading from their homeland about three thousand years ago after they started to grow various tropical and subtropical root crops such as yams (native to Africa) and taro (domesticated in Island Southeast Asia but imported to Africa). The Bantus were among the first Africans to smelt iron and make iron tools, and such tools were ideal for cutting down trees and clearing land for farming, as well as for cultivating root crops.
The two technologies, cultivation of root crops and the smelting and working of iron, complemented each other and enabled Bantu populations to grow rapidly, spreading into neighboring areas of West Africa and to the east and southeast.
Bantu peoples infiltrated into areas that were lightly populated, and wherever they moved they cleared new land on which to grow their crops, and they traded with the indigenous peoples, exchanging root crops, and sometimes iron tools and weapons, for meat. Some Bantu blacksmiths furnished iron weapons to armies that fought each other, selling their services to the highest bidder; and some of the military leaders that they dealt with went on to found the first West African kingdoms.
Trouble in Africa
This partnership ended when the West African kings that Bantu blacksmiths had supplied with weapons invaded Bantu areas and subjugated those living in West Africa. And then the bubonic plague struck, and it was particularly deadly and long-lasting for the Bantus.
Bantus stored their root crops in close proximity to their living quarters, so they were themselves quite accessible to fleas that carried bubonic plague from the rats that fed on stored food. Virtually the entire Bantu population was wiped out, and the effects of the plague persisted much longer among the Bantus than among the peoples of Europe, or certainly than among the hunters-gatherers of Africa.
Recovery and triumph
About 1,000 years ago, after the plague had loosened its grip on the Bantus and potential farmland had become scarce in Central Africa due to population pressure, Bantu farmers began moving east, into East Africa.
The ancestors of the animal herders that they found living there had previously pushed click-speaking tribes out of the region, but the Bantus and the animal herders developed a synergistic relationship – the Bantus exchanged root crops and iron tools for animal products. Perhaps the Bantus avoided selling weaponry to the herdsmen – such things as long knives, spear points, arrow heads and bludgeons.
Bantu populations were expanding rapidly, and the Bantus didn’t want trouble with their animal-herder neighbors, so they infiltrated further and further south until they came into contact with click-speaking tribes. Those ancient people spoke languages that included a click sound, which may have originally been in imitation of percussive signals.
Some of the click speakers were descendants of those who had been pushed south by the animal herders, and they quickly ejected the Bantu farmers from their lands, but more Bantus kept coming south and the two peoples repeatedly clashed.
Each time the armies engaged with each other, the Bantus came better armed than before, because after each engagement Bantu blacksmiths set to work improving their weapon designs. Ultimately, the Bantu blacksmiths came up with a new kind of weapon, the assegai, that was devastatingly more effective than the long stone-tipped spears that the click speakers carried into combat. The stone-tipped spears were no match for the assegai, a short thrusting spear tipped by a long knife-like blade.
The Bantus pushed the click speakers out of the most productive areas, leaving them only semi-desert and mountainous regions where only a few could survive.
Ongoing evolution?
For the most part, Bantu-speaking peoples have triumphed, in general, among the other indigenous peoples of Africa. They have triumphed militarily. economically and demographically. For instance. about half of all Africans now learn a Bantu-based language in infanthood, presumably from their mothers, before they learn any other language.
The many Bantu languages have evolved, in the course of time, from a language that was spoken by only a few people who lived in a small area near the "armpit" of Africa, three or four thousand years ago. Although not all Bantu-speaking people are direct descendants of the small original Bantu population, the popularity of Bantu languages today indicates that evolution is still ongoing among Homo sapiens.
The Bantus have always been quick to adopt new ideas. For instance, they surely didn't invent the smelting of iron, nor did they invent blacksmithing. Iron technologies were brought to Africa by non-Africans. Moreover, almost all of the root crops that they grew were imported to Africa after being domesticated in other places. Yet Bantus were the iron smelters and blacksmith of Africa, and their population growth was fed by the root crops that they grew. They did not domesticate cattle, but some of them picked up pastoralism as a way of life and then brought it to southern Africa.
The Bantu expansion illustrates how competition among different ancestral groups drove hominin evolution for at least two million years, and it still is driving our evolution.
A change in direction?
On the other hand, during the last fifty thousand years or so, evolution seems to be taking us toward diversity, rather than versatility, in at least some respects.
For instance, the constantly increasing brain sizes of the last two million years, which enabled our ancestors to become more and more versatile, no longer characterizes our evolution. Instead, current brain-size evolution has turned into random drift. This is probably because of a combination of features of modern life:
1. New birthing procedures enable mothers to successfully give birth even when the infant has an extra-large head.
2. Good nutrition has been a fact of life for most human populations in recent times so that large brains no longer compete for scarce resources that are needed by other tissues, such as muscles.
3. Human societies have become so large and interconnected that people no longer have to be versatile in order to pass on their genes.
Not only do big brains not necessarily contribute to survival, but in the last fifty thousand years they have increasingly become a handicap, and average brain sizes have tended to decline.
contribute to survival, but they have been a net handicap for the last fifty thousand years, and this has resulted in a decline in average brain size. This decline of average brain size would most likely be most pronounced in the most modern societies if nutrition had not improved overall. In other words, modern life seems to support an evolutionary trend toward smaller brain sizes, and we may be following in the footsteps of Homo naledi.
What about taking charge?
It has been suggested that we should take steps to stop evolution altogether. This might be safer than letting blind chance rule our future course of evolution, but it calls to mind Adolph Hitler's quest to eliminate genetic characteristics that he thought were inferior (or, in fact, if he thought they might be superior in some ways to his planned Master Race.
The future
So, what surprises lay hidden in future time? Chances are that Florida will disappear, and major metropolises around the world will sink beneath the waves. Most of the animals and plants that we find on Earth today will be squeezed out of existence by Homo sapiens. In short, another existential crisis is staring us in the face, as our population, technology and habits squeeze the life out of our planet. Again, we find ourselves unable to come to a consensus as to what to do to save ourselves. But now, the group that needs to agree about the problem and take concerted action consists of all of humanity. What is clear is that present trends are unsustainable, so I will end my story with this question: Are we ultimately winners or losers?
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