bantu in the crystal ball, ii*...bantu in the crystal ball 295 his reconstruction of the original...

BANTU IN THE CRYSTAL BALL, II*

Jan Vansina University of Wisconsin

Interest in the question of Bantu expansion rose dramatically in the 1950s as historians, archeologists, and anthropologists all joined in the fray. This reflected both the rise of Africa in world affairs and the expansion of research in general. The scholars involved were typically a new breed of professionals, and as such more dependent than their predecessors on universities or research institutions. The School of Oriental and African Studies in London achieved overwhelming dominance from about 1950 until the late 1960s, so that opinions held by its staff found the widest audience. The new scholars also were, for the most part, anti-racist, sympathetic to African nationalisms, and of liberal or socialist persuasion. They tended to reject the notion of "conquest," believing in gradual change rather than abrupt cataclysmic mutation, perhaps because they were repelled by their recent experiences during the war. As had happened earlier, these extraneous circumstances left a deep imprint on the speculations that were now proposed. x 51t Early in this period a new paradigm almost achieved consensus, but after 1968 this fell apart and during the last decade two new trends have appeared: the single-minded quest for a new paradigm and the search for better understanding through the study of analogous processes, coupled with a more radical skepticism.

Murdock

H.H. Johnston's views still held the field in the early 1950s. Remember that he held that the Bantu spread as a result of a massive migration and conquest which began perhaps two millennia ago in the interlacustrine area. An occasional variant — such as that proposed by Schebesta, who held that both Bantu and "Sudanic" languages had evolved from the primordial language of the pygmies in Ituri — attracted no following.155 Joseph Greenberg's new classification of African languages, however, was slowly gaining acceptance, especially in the United States, where George P. Murdock, a culture historian of the school of Franz Boas, published a new hypothesis in 1959. For Murdock, the link between language and culture was much more significant than Herskovlts had believed. Murdock argued that "in the absence,

HISTORY IN AFRICA 7(1980)

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294 JAN VANSINA

of written records, linguistic relationships provide by far the most dependable evidence of historical connection.' Like Greenberg, Murdock's concern was with the continent as a whole and Bantu expansion was only one part of the fresco he wished to paint.

Murdock's anthropology was comparative, but rested on a passion for ethnography, so that his book is replete with potted ethnographic vignettes. A newcomer to African studies, he saw Africa through the eyes of someone who had long worked with North American Indian and Pacific materials. All this is reflected in his hypothesis that the Bantu expansion had been an "explosive expansion," though not a conquest, even though he did compare it to that of the Arabs after Muhammad, the Chinese occupation of southern China, and European expansion since the fifteenth century. The proto-Bantu homeland lay in Cameroun. The movement from there began about the first century A.D. and the Bantu speakers spread in "waves" into the forest, the occupation of which was made possible by the acquisition of new crops — the banana, taro, and yams, all originally from Malaysia. These had reached Cameroun via East Africa and then by a route north of the forest. Their cultivation led to a population explosion in the proto-Bantu area, which in turn induced the expansion and penetration of the forest, where the pygmies were easily reduced to a symbiotic dependence.157 People from the lowland portion of the Bantu domain moved along the coast to southern Gabon and as far as the Malebo Pool.158 Another wave spread eastwards through the forest, emerging in Uganda. 59

While the northern stream of Bantu became patrilineal under the influence of their northern "Nigritic" neighbors, the southern stream remained matrilineal as the proto-Bantu had been. In the interlacustrine area the Bantu expansion succeeded only by borrowing most of the culture of the older Cushitic inhabitants found there, including highly-complex state systems and cereal crops. They transmitted the new composite culture southward as far as the Cape.161 Tanzania was occupied by Bantu speakers from central Africa, who fanned out northward from Mozambique, where they met "Azanians" and occupied land disdained by the latter, expanding in this fashion as far north as the Banadir coast. 6 The southwestern Bantu came directly from the adjacent Bantu speakers in the woodlands, while expansion in southern Mozambique and Zimbabwe derived from other Bantu speakers in the woodlands to their north.163 The last wave of expansion occurred in "the historical period" and carried Bantu speakers to Botswana after about 1720. 161*

Murdock's hypothesis was accompanied by precise dates, named spaces, and tangible and identifiable changes, and he provided explanations for all the whys and wherefores. Despite his protestation about the importance of linguistic evidence, his arguments used only the linguistic notion of a Cameroun cradleland; otherwise it derived from ethnographic data and culture change, which he implicitly saw mostly as a process of borrowing and adapting. He used "survivals" in a way typical of the culture historical school. Often he combined traces of survivals with survivals of complete systems. For instance, in



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BANTU IN THE CRYSTAL BALL 295

his reconstruction of the original kinship system of the proto-Bantu as matrilineal and avunculocal, he stressed the "survival" value of the Nigerian plateau cultures.16 5 In this fashion Murdock attempted to account for all the cultural diversities in the Bantu-speaking world. It was a grand vision, one which Hartland had perceived in inchoate form. But it was a mirage only. Too many hypothetical ghosts like the "Azanians" and "Megalithic Cushites" peopled the stage. Murdock's attempt, bold as it was, definitely was premature, so much so that no one since has even attempted to replace it by another hypothesis as complete. And no wonder: it involves the reconstruction of at least three thousand years of history over more than a third of a continent!

The Iron Age of Bantu Studies

Archeologists had long been active on the continent in search of the "missing link" and of the oldest stone age cultures, but had steadfastly ignored later sites. Desmond Clark was the first among them to take such sites in Bantu-speaking Africa other than Zimbabwe seriously. Clark was concerned about the relations between sites and present-day populations.166 His first survey, The Prehistory of Southern Africa published in 1959, reflected the then-standard views about Bantu expansion, but he modified them in light of the results of fieldwork in southern Africa. Notably he insisted that Bantu was a linguistic term, not a race, and that Bantu speakers had migrated from east Africa, one of the basic strains being perhaps Mascudi's "Zenj."167 Clark argued that Bantu speakers were the first metal-using food producers in southern Africa, arriving first in small numbers as stock owners oum farmers and metallurgists.168 Later, new migrants came from the "Congo basin" — "barbaric warriors" and agriculturalists who exterminated the earlier occupants.169 This was the migration responsible for the great ruins of Rhodesia and Angola, he claimed, and added that "their culture shows connexions with the Congo and perhaps with southern Abyssinia, where it has been suggested that the Jagas may have originated."170 In summing up Clark equated the earlier Bantu speakers with the "channeled ware" people who were in Zambia c. A.D. 90 and also with the "stamped ware" people of Rhodesia c. A.D. 500. The "barbaric warriors" arrived before 1400 A.D. and were associated with the "ruin ware." They ousted the "stamped ware" people, who retreated across the Limpopo.l

Meanwhile, research in the Early Iron Age was also beginning in Uganda, Rwanda, and Shaba. The earliest known iron age in east Africa was dubbed "dimple based ware." Jean Hiernaux and Merrick Posnansky both concluded from its similarity with "channeled ware" further south that the so-called "dimple based ware" could represent physical traces of the Bantu expansion. Hiernaux first presented this view in a paper in 1959, but Posnansky was the first to pursue the matter seriously.172

Influenced by Murdock, he discussed the evidence for the banana as a key to the Bantu expansion but argued instead that the agricultural revolution in general led to the build-up of population



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300 JAN VANSINA

Ubangi rivers, having perfected their boatbuilding skills thanks to iron working skills already learned in Nigeria.

This constituted Oliver's stage I. Stage II was the expansion of the population in Shaba from coast to coast and the borrowing of cereals cultivated by Cushites in eastern Africa. The first reference to Bantu speakers on the coast may well have been by Ptolemy in the first century A.D. On the east coast Bantu speakers acquired the Malaysian crops and this set the scene for stage III, during which vastly increased Bantu populations moved into wetter areas, especially toward the interlacus-trine regions, Zambia, and all along the humid East coast. That happened between 500 and 1000 A.D. Stage IV saw the colonization of the remainder of the equatorial forest, southeast Africa, and the interior of eastern Africa.

Oliver held that the Early Iron Age in eastern Africa was not solely a Bantu-related phenomenon, though he argued that the Later Iron Age was. His distinction between two iron ages followed Clark and Wrigley. The difficulty lay in explaining the Early Iron Age. This was, Oliver felt, introduced by Bantu speakers, but the techniques spread ahead of their expansion into southeastern Africa, as evidenced by the Khoi or San skeletons at Mapungubwe. Those sites should be contrasted with Sanga and the Kalambo site in Zambia, which, he argued, were linked to the first Bantu population build-up. This meant that the "channeled ware" tradition was Bantu; this did not spread, however, from north to south as archeologists believed, but from south to north, and its spread belonged to stage III. State building in the interlacustrine area occurred as a reaction to Nilotic pressure and it may have owed much to influences from conquering minorities from Ethiopia and Sudan.

Oliver's article was a masterful synthesis of existing points of view insofar as it reconciled the positions of all major views since 1949 and was susceptible to checking by further archeological work. Soon after its publication articles by both Posnansky and Hiernaux endorsed the schema. Posnansky stressed the difference between channeled ware and dimple based ware and suggested that both derived from an unknown single source X, which was to be sought somewhere west of east Africa (perhaps in Shabal). He felt, though, that Oliver had underestimated the west African origins of the Bantu expansion.192 Hiernaux, a physical anthropologist, concluded his major revision of human biology by 1968.193 In an article in Journal of African History he claimed that linguistics, archeology, and human biology all yielded results which supported Oliver's thesis.191f The paradigm seemed to have triumphed. It appeared as if its now silenced opponents were merely lagging behind the times.

The Decline and Fall of the London Paradigm

Yet when Oliver and Brian Fagan, an Iron Age specialist in archeology and a close collaborator of Oliver since 1960, called a conference on the Bantu expansion at Chicago in 1968, the meetings did not just tie up loose ends in the paradigm. Serious


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disagreements soon surfaced. Some historians and linguists realized that many Bantuists did not accept Guthrie's theories, but were waiting for the full results of his work to be published before they voiced any criticism. Most influential among these critics were Greenberg and Albert E. Meeussen.195 All the participants at the Chicago meeting accepted Greenberg's views and much of the discussion was devoted to whether the first Bantu speakers skirted the forest to reach central Africa or whether they crossed it. Those who favored the second possibility wanted to eliminate Guthrie's cradle altogether. Posnansky's idea about the relationship between "dimple based" ware and "channeled ware" ware found favor and was expanded with the help of the concept of "co-tradition" developed by American archeologists. But there were more than just two types of pottery involved. Thomas Huffman argued that, although archeologists fell into camps of "lumpers" and "splitters" on this score, they nevertheless all accepted a common "culture" as the fans et origo of all these members of the co-tradition. He believed, and no one contradicted him, that this ancestral culture could be found in Zaire or Angola, with Mozambique as a less likely alternative. In other words, culture X (not yet found) was located in place Y (where no excavations had as yet been undertaken).

Some attention was also given to the linguistic indications in proto-Bantu concerning the use of iron. As the first volume of Guthrie's Comparative Bantu had just appeared it could be ascertained that the evidence was equivocal. Thus the item "to forge" might also mean "to hammer;" the item for "iron ore" could also mean "stone;" "iron" could also mean "valuables;" etc. As a result it could be argued that originally all these roots referred to the technology of a Stone Age people. As to the real links between languages and biological characteristics of populations, it soon became clear that the osteological remains were far too scarce to allow any firm conclusions. Whatever conclusions were reached, it was highly unlikely that they could throw light on languages spoken.

Some of these concerns found their way only into the Conference Report but some of the participants, dissenters or not, prepared their own publications.196 Huffman elaborated his views when he held that the original co-tradition probably evolved in Shaba and could represent either the proto-Bantu stage or the proto-eastern Bantu expansion only. This ancestral culture split into two groups, an eastern and a southern African group, and each later divided into a number of variants as attested by the archeological record. Desmond Clark proposed that the earliest Bantu speakers, who crossed the forest as in the London paradigm, lost their cereal agriculture on the way and did not know how to smelt iron.198 They acquired both techniques south of the forest and separated, still according to the paradigm, into western and eastern streams. The western Bantu then must have left the cradle before 200 A.D. and the eastern stream is represented by the "dimple based" and "channeled ware" sites. His article, however, is perhaps most remarkable in that, by considering various sorts of alternatives, he unintentionally demonstrated



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302 JAN VANSINA

how easily archeological evidence can be tailored to fit any linguistic theory that might be advanced. It all depends on which cultures one chooses to equate with which group of people.

Christopher Ehret and I had attended the Chicago conference and were also dissatisfied, although we both believed that some kind of paradigm could still be set up. I used the Horizon History of Africa to propose a different scenario, taking Clark's attribution of the expansion to population increase, but locating it in Cameroun, rejecting Guthrie's arguments completely.199 Arguing that life in the forest was more pleasant than in the savanna, especially along the numerous ecological boundaries, I suggested that it was reasonable that the Bantu expanded southwards without compulsion. This movement was neither a compact migration nor a colonization, although I reflexlvely used terms like "migration" and "wave." The Bantu speakers carried their cereals through the forest but their progress halted for a while at the forest's edge in order to adapt their technology to new environments. The expansion then followed major rivers south of the forest, being always mindful of favorable environments. The Bantu speakers finally reached the east coast in the lower Zambezi area and then spread north and south. Meanwhile, other groups followed the forest's edge to the east until they emerged in the interlacustrine area, where there was already a sizeable population, so that the expansion made much slower headway there. By the time Bantu speech reached Lake Victoria it had reached Zanzibar from the south.

The relation with iron-working was complex. The proto-Bantu had not been iron users. The interlacustrine Bantu learned the art from the autochthones and the northwest Bantu speakers acquired it from Nigeria, while on the east coast Arab traders brought the technology. The eastern Bantu speakers also acquired cattle from the previous inhabitants. The last phase of the expansion occurred between the first and fifth centuries A.D., with Bantu speakers crossing the Zambezi and progressing slowly in Kenya and Tanzania. The dating was unclear but earlier, on the whole, than in the SOAS paradigm so that Bantuization was seen as a lengthy process. Language shifts were caused by social conditions. Bantu speakers lived in compact settlements and imposed their speech on the dispersed populations around them but, as the differences between "town" and "country" were slight, the process was a gradual one. I also drew attention to the massive evidence for convergence in borrowing, which made it possible to evolve a genetic classification of Bantu languages. 00

Ehret had already demonstrated in 1967 that cattle spread into southern Africa from east Africa and this impugned one of the reconstructions of Guthrie.201 Now he attacked Guthrie's views directly in a relatively obscure article.202 Ehret was the first to stress the importance of core vocabulary as evidence, argued that northwest Bantu and all the rest were equal branches of proto-Bantu, and found in this a strong confirmation for Greenberg's views on the spread of Bantu languages. The Bantu first spread into the forest and only later outward from it. The later spread of eastern bantu languages occurred about 2000



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years ago and was to be correlated with the east African Early Iron Age. The beginning of the earlier expansion should be dated to before 1000 B.C., that is, before agriculture had spread to the proto-Bantu. Ehret also stressed the importance of borrowing, an aspect of historical linguistics which was his special area of research.

Greenberg, who had not attended the Chicago meeting, reasserted his own views, rejecting Oliver's compromise and rebutting Guthrie with great care.203 It was an admirable rebuttal, but one that probably was too technical for the average reader.

In any case, the London paradigm continued to be accepted by most English-speaking scholars who, at the time, still represented the great majority of Africanists. It became the basic paradigm for further enquiry by physical anthropologists, archeologists, and historians. It also began to appear in textbooks. whereas Robert Rotberg in 1966 had simply listed Greenberg and Guthrie's views side by side, basing himself on literature up to 1962, Robert Collins used Oliver's article as the capstone in a section where Bantu expansion was presented as a "problem" for students, and Harry Gailey's text called the same piece "a perceptive composite analysis."20'* If textbooks are always behind the times, they nevertheless consecrate an earlier consensus. In France Pierre Alexandre's contribution to Histoire generate de I'Afrique noire cited both Greenberg and Guthrie, but then claimed without further elaboration that the Cameroun data agreed with Guthrie's views.205

In time the London paradigm was accepted by many in France. Randies used it, although he held that the proto-Bantu arrived in Shaba after having skirted the entire forest, rather than crossing it. He duly identified the Early Iron Age cultures of eastern and southern Africa with the spread of the Bantu speakers from Shaba caused by better food-producing techniques. By providing a description of Bantu civilization, as if this civilization had not been altered much before 1500 A.D., he attempted to fit the paradigm into the mold of Braudel's longue duree. Randies re-introduced in this fashion the old notion of a civilization that spread with language to all parts of Bantu speaking Africa and reinforced old notions of an unchanging "traditional society."206

The Search for a New Paradigm

1973 was a turning point for Bantu studies. It saw the publication of articles by Bernd Heine and Alex Henrici which led to the proposing of a completely new paradigm.207 Heine and Henrici confirmed Ehret's findings but with fresh data and in greater detail. The importance of Henrici's contribution lay in the fact that he had used Guthrie's own data yet, by using lexicostatistics, had come to a genetic classification of the Bantu languages that was totally different. He concluded that the process of differentiation of Bantu languages involved a few languages splitting off from the "core" at different times.

Heine's results were similar. His contribution was



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based" and "channeled ware" potteries. The southern group later broke into seven subdivisions.212 This conclusion does not tally at all with Coupez, who divided eastern Bantu in four groups: Nyanga, Shona, Zulu, and the rest, with the residue subdividing into five smaller groups. 13 The differences between Ehret and Coupez were far more striking than the resemblances, and neither corresponds very closely to Henrici's subdivisions.

Beyond the general agreement between the results of Heine, Henrici, and Coupez, there were also significant differences. Thus Coupez included the whole of Guthrie's zone K and probably R in his eastern Bantu, whereas Heine excluded them, and Coupez integrated Heine's Aruwimi into Guthrie's zone C. This means that Coupez did not recognize much of the evidence adduced by Heine for an early fast movement of Bantu speakers from the lower Sanaga to the East. Despite basic agreement, then, between Heine, Henrici, Ehret, and Coupez about the process of splitting, much of the detail will require further data and study, if indeed it is possible to reach a valid genetic classification of eastern Bantu languages at all. Heine and others attempted partly to achieve this in 1977 by slightly enlarging the number of their test languages. In this they did not take cognizance of Coupez's work but did cite Ehret.21"* Their results were largely similar to the results of Heine's earlier study, but it is evident, given the discrepancies among the three main classifications of eastern Bantu, that all the new proposals have a tentative air about them and that further revisions are to be expected.

This impression was confirmed by the conference on Bantu expansion at Viviers in April, 1977. Most of the participants were European scholars and the conference did not come up with any new paradigm. Among the points that were most hotly debated was the basic question of what is to be defined as "Bantu" and what is not. Thus Guthrie's groups A40 and A60 in Cameroun were discarded from a definition of "strict Bantu."215 The net effect is to confine the cradle of Bantu even more closely to the Sanaga-Mbam area. But this conflicts with the results of the enquiry by Patrick Bennett and Jan Sterk, whose Bantoid is divided into several nodes, so that in the end Guthrie's zones A, B, C, and part of D, along with Ekoid and Mbam-Nkam (Cameroun), form a Cameroun-Congo group, while the rest of Guthrie's zones D and zones E, F, G, H, K, L, M, N, P, R, and S form a block opposed to Tiv, with Tiv forming an "Ungwa" group. Cameroun-Congo is a subdivision of Wok, which also includes Jarawan. Wok and Ungwa are the two branches of "Bin," which corresponds to the "wider Bantu" of earlier definitions.216 Here, too, the different proposals have a tentative air about them. Most linguists seem to agree on a "wider Bantu" which would include some so-called Bantoid languages, but its subdivisions are far from evident at this time. Part or all of the northwestern Bantu languages may now be opposed to all others, even if the nature and the degree of opposition still remains unclear,

Meanwhile, Henrici's article had an impact on scholars at SOAS. David Dalby's rearguard action in defense of Guthrie's work was unconvincing. Dalby admitted that Guthrie had "cast his net too wide" and that some of the northwestern Bantu



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BANTU IN THE CRYSTALL BALL 309

which then expanded through Angola to Namibia. Meanwhile, other interlacustrine Bantu went to the Kenya coast (100-200 A.D.) while a little later a major stream left the great lakes area to go to Transvaal, losing their cattle on the way to tsetse infection. At the same time the Kenya coast Bantu speakers also moved south to eastern Transvaal. By 400-500 A.D. Bantu from the western stream had entered Shaba, where they met eastern stream folk. A subsequent increase in population in Shaba led to the rise of Later Iron Age cultures, which spread over eastern and southern Africa between 1000 A.D. and 1600 A.D., bringing eastern Bantu speech to the region.

Phillipson's interpretation, though more explicit than Oliver's with regard to eastern Bantu, is very close to Oliver's later views. Phillipson links a remnant of the Guthrie/Dalby theory (the "Shaba nucleus") to Heine's views and uses it to account for a Later Iron Age. The interlacustrine area is credited with its usual pivotal role and the theory has become much more complex when it deals with eastern Bantu languages. Very little archeological work has occurred in the western half of the subcontinent, but Phillipson's theory does not take this fact into account. Even so, this complex hypothesis still did not do justice to Phillipson's own views on archeology since, in Zambia alone, he saw at least two distinct streams for the Later Iron Age, yet assigned only one set of languages (eastern Bantu) to both of them.23

So far few archeologists have completely rejected Phillipson's scheme but some are expressing doubts about some of the details, claiming, for instance, that there is no single Later Iron Age beginning c. 1000 A.D.237 The dating of Urewe ware may be too early, while a single Urewe tradition does not exist.2 8

Nicholas David rejects Phillipson's and Oliver's view that the Bantu speakers went around the forest. Instead he argued that Bantu speakers first occupied the forest, following river valleys, and in this way arrived in the then-heavily forested interlacustrine area, where Urewe ware developed. The use of iron also spread from west Africa along the same routes, but later this innovation reached the interlacustrine area via the forest. But David accepted Phillipson's views about the spread of eastern Bantu from the interlacustrine area southward.239

The Disenchanted

By the mid-1970s a number of scholars who were not connected with SOAS began to express their disenchantment with all the existing paradigms. The earliest was Lwanga Lunyiigo, for whom Bantu-speaking Negroes appeared very early and who claimed that the supposed exodus from west Africa never took place, and that the exact spot of origin of the Bantu languages cannot be determined. It is to archeology, Lwanga Lunyiigo argues, rather than to linguistics, that we must turn. On the basis of divergences in the opinions of such linguists as Greenberg, Guthrie, and Ehret, he dismisses them all. Noting the results of Schmidt in Buhaya, he maintains that the smelting of iron was independently



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312 JAN VANSINA

uniformity cannot be postulated as a correlation of the language situation. Some communities may have been fishermen, others farmers. Some communities may have exhibited a certain social organization while others may have been organized quite differently. The proto-Bantu focus is not sharp; it refers to several languages and several communities. The moment of proto-Bantu falls between c. 1500 B.C. when cereal agriculture appears, and c. 500 B.C., when the knowledge of ironworking began to spread. The moment itself also must be considered as somewhat blurred, because of convergence phenomena. Proto-Bantu can refer only to a period of unknown duration, during which the congeries of Bantu languages differentiated from its neighbors. The localization of proto-Bantu in space also is not precise. The congeries of tongues and communities was settled between the Benue, the Cross, and the Sanaga rivers.

After the "moment" of proto-Bantu further linguistic differentiation occurred, though not necessarily at a rapid or constant rate, as Greenberg postulated. I>s All we can say today is that the Bantu congeries first expanded in the most northwesterly part of the forest and that further spread occurred broadly from northeast to southwest. Geography and topography no doubt played a significant role, as is shown by the differences in the strength of convergence among savanna languages, where convergence is very strong, and parts of the forest, where convergence is much less evident — although in other parts, such as within the Congo river bend or east of the Upper Zaire fairly strong evidence of convergence also appears. The mobility of individuals, more than the mobility of groups, also played a major role in the evolution of the Bantu languages as differentiators and as instruments for convergence.

Nor can the process of expansion necessarily be seen as occurring in ever-widening circles. All we know is that, by the eighth century A.D. at the latest, Bantu terms from the east coast were reported by Arabs. Perhaps the dialectological study of items relating to metallurgy, Malaysian crops, or fowl may be of some help in establishing relative stages of spreading, but even this is doubtful since convergence also acted on these items.

How were the languages carried? The main mechanism may have been drift, rather than migration, though migration cannot be excluded entirely. Other mechanisms probably were the development of linguae franoae, used by traders and traveling artisans; the development of koine, new languages accepted over an area as "standard intercommunity speech" and related no doubt to the preferences of elites; the occurrence of language shifts as aboriginal populations abandoned their speech in favor of a Bantu language, perhaps because for hunters and gatherers leading a nomadic life, a Bantu-speaking farming village became a cultural center for a region. Any and all of the forces sociolinguists have discovered may have operated at different times in different places and with different intensities. It is not certain at all that any population explosion was ever needed to account for this spread, nor is the contrary — the extinction of aboriginal



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which conclusions can be derived, while for Guthrie common Bantu starred forms were merely convenient comparative formulae from which very few conclusions could (or should) be derived. In archeology technical advances have played a major role. In terms of dating techniques we can discern three epochs: pre-C1"*, the post-C11* euphoria, and, since the late 1960s, the age of second thoughts. There is an age of pre-flotation techniques and an age with flotation techniques and this has had a marked impact on the data available concerning evidence for domestic plants, and so on. No wonder that Ranger could observe that

"it would be a rash historian who today accepted the conclusions of Garlake and Huffman with the same simple-minded trust as I myself accepted the conclusions of Summers and Robinson. "21*9

Ranger's disillusionment aptly illustrates the problems in understanding data from other disciplines. Clearly the expedient usually used in accepting such data, namely the degree of consensus at a given moment in that discipline, is simply invalid.

In theory at least, independent confirmation of a situation by data from different disciplines strengthens any argument. But first we must be certain that they address the same evidence. Thus a correlation between Early Iron Age and Bantu expansion involves the premise that pottery and language travel hand in hand. A correlation between linguistic and biological evidence presumes migration as the mechanism of language spread; a correlation between architecture and linguistic distributions ties the two together. It has become painfully evident from the record that in most cases the evidence is not the same, so there is no independent confirmation of the data. To complicate matters the weight of proof for data from different backgrounds is not equal. How much could one really count on Johnston's fowl? The evidence is onomatopoeic and only linguists would likely be aware of how exiguous the particular argument was, for some ideophones are more convincing than others.2 ° The value of a given C date depends among other things on the association, on a set of dates, on the laboratory that processed them, on the method used, and on the substance from which it was derived. Archeologists are usually aware of this, which colors their attitudes toward such dates.

The most insidious difficulty with interdisciplinary research stems from the inevitable selectiveness in choosing data. The lacunae in all fields are still enormous. What seems today to be a strong correlation may be swept away when more data are uncovered. The scholar today inevitably builds his case from very few basic data and adds to it that which fits, ignoring other materials. This has occurred in all the major speculations. Johnston had an idea about what a Bantu language should be like and it governed his positioning of archaic languages, and the same is true of Guthrie. Johnston then fitted other evidence in. Thus the interlacustrine area was a secondary cradle because of the "antiquity" of the languages, allowing Egyptian influences to be postulated as coming up the Nile. Murdock needed the



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Malaysian plants to trigger the overpopulation and a Bantu dispersal and so he postulated the diffusion of these crops from the east African coast to Cameroun, necessary because he used Greenberg's hypothesis. Guthrie and Oliver had to postulate a mad dash across the rain forest to reconcile otherwise irreconcilable linguistic positions and Oliver used a few C "* dates to invert the progression of the eastern and southern African Early Iron Ages. Phillipson accepted Heine and then ignored a major feature in Heine's hypothesis, the position of the third nucleus and its immediate ancestor, because that failed to fit with the archeological data he used.

The moral of the whole search for the Bantu in the crystal ball is clearly that if every specialist stays within his own discipline and does not worry unduly about the effects his findings might have on the question of Bantu expansion less distortion will result. True, there will be much less of a consensus, but at least inevitable contradictions will not be glossed over, so that the undeniable complexities of the issues relating to "Bantu expansion" will appear. The greatest defect of all hypotheses to date has been their reductionism. In their desire to present a single comprehensive explanation for a set of complex phenomena, all the scholars involved have succumbed to the temptation to oversimplify. The strongest reductionism occurred in equating language, society, and culture, sometimes even including physical population.

For the basic question about Bantu expansion involves the relationship between language, culture, society, and physical population. If all agreed that languages spread independently of culture, Bantu expansion would be no more of a problem than, say, the spread of throwing knives and clubs from Egypt to Zaire. The problem is important because researchers accept that there are some vital links involved. How then does one extrapolate from language to culture and society? For those such as the culture historians before World War II who did not believe in a strong association between language and culture, there is no Bantu question at all, but others have accepted that the association is strong.

Murdock especially is clear on this. If two people speak related languages they are both descended from a single ancestral society or else one group abandoned their own language in favor of that of the other, which requires intimate and protracted contact.251 Murdock does not state, however, that the second group also took over the culture of the first group, and for good reason. We know for instance that the pygimes took over the languages, but not the cultures, of their neighbors. Again, Bira is spoken by farmers in the savanna, by farmers in the forest with a different social system and a different culture, and by pygmy hunters and gatherers in the forest. But when Murdock began his discussion of Bantu expansion he compared it with that of the Arabs and the Europeans, thus implying population movements as well.252 In the same way Johnston's conquest later became Oliver's colonization. Meinhof first believed in mass migration, but later saw the invaders as a superior minority.



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The very fact that convergence is such a massive phenomenon among Bantu languages and occurs in phonology, morphology, and syntax, as well as in vocabulary, attests to the vitality of processes of diffusion other than migration. Once again the size of the area involved and the size of the time depth involved preclude any simple explanation. No "simple" migration can ever explain the spread of the Bantu languages, so the assumption that language = culture = community is a premise needing constant reassessment and refinement. And this is true regarding the relevance of interdisciplinary research. The techniques used by comparative linguists have necessarily led to the reconstruction of language differentiation as a genealogical tree. But this, too, is a premise. Non-linguists would do well to be cautious in accepting genealogical trees as revealed truth.257 Given the convergence phenomenon, the tree models are more than likely a false representation of affairs. And out with them goes, once again, the need for postulating migrations.

One can discuss premises made in relation to the Bantu languages, such as the speed or the constancy of the expansion, or the relationships between the shape of a term and its meaning over time, but it would serve only to emphasize the basic point that there is no law about the relationship between language, culture, and society. There is no overwhelming evidence for constant massive migrations carrying new cultures and new forms of society along with new languages to new areas. Evidently the relationship between language, culture, and society change at different times in different parts of the Bantu-speaking area, and within language itself there was a constant tug-of-war between differentiating and converging tendencies. Any premise which is based solely on constant relationships between language, culture, and society therefore is wrong, and any general rules about the relevance of this or that discipline to the question of Bantu expansion are misplaced. The inescapable conclusion is that Johnston posed and attempted to solve a false problem in 1886, when — following the example of Indo-European scholars — he attempted to account for the Bantu expansion. The problem is one of language only. Problems about the diffusion of crops, iron, musical instruments (xylophone), social customs (matrilinearity), domestic animals (fowl), or decoration and shapes in pottery all must be dealt with on their own merits. They all represent different and discrete phenomena. In fine this is the best reason why researchers of each discipline should concentrate on their own data in formulating their own conclusions. The chances that the diffusion of, say, pottery decoration is related closely to the diffusion of Bantu languages are infinitesimally small.

The very concept of a "Bantu expansion" carries by now too many axioms within itself. It is too misleading to be maintained as a goal for research. Much work remains to be done by linguists about both the synchronic and the diachronic problems of Bantu languages. Archeologlsts have barely begun to probe the sites they can uncover, especially in the western half of the Bantu-speaking world, while anthropologists should begin to examine dynamic processes in areas with related cultures, and biologists



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are only really beginning with the study of physical populations in relation to their environment and their past. It may be as much as a century too soon to reconstruct the last 3000 years or more of history in the Bantu-speaking subcontinent. It is not too soon, however, for historians (as opposed to archeologists and linguists) to become genuinely involved with recent linguistic history and with the Later Iron Age. There they stand a chance to join the results of different disciplines together into a coherent vision of the last half millennium. There they can learn what the pitfalls of evidence from all these disciplines are and what they can contribute to an overall reconstruction of the past.

NOTES

* The first part of this paper appeared in HA, 6(1979), 287-333. 154. See Jan Vansina, "Bantu in the Crystal Ball, I," History in

Afriaa, 6(1979), 321-25. The social organization of Bantuists influenced the success of particular speculations, since such success is measured by the consensus of scholars, in turn strongly influenced by institutional realities.

155. Paul Schebesta, Die Bambuti-pygmaen vorn Ituri, (Brussels, 1950); V. van Bulck, "Het probleem der Pygmeeentaal volgens Schebesta," Kongo-Overzee, 14(1948), 305-09.

156. G.P. Murdock, Afriaa: Its Peoples and their Culture History (New York, 1959), 12.

45. 271-74. 279. 279, 300. 349-50. 306, 357, 373. 377. 383-86. 96-99, 277.

Clark, "A Note of the Pre-Bantu Inhabitants of Northern Rhodesia," South African Journal of Science, 47(1950), 80-85; R. Oliver and B. Fagan, Afriaa in the Iron Age: a.500 B.C. to A.D. 1400 (London, 1975), 94-96.

167. Clark, The Prehistory of Southern Africa (Harmondsworth, 21-22, 283. 283. 283-84. 303. 311-12.

Hiernaux, Le debut de l'age des metaux dans la region des grands lacs" in G. Mortelmans and J. Nenquin, Aates du IV0 Congres panafrioain de prehistoire et de I'etude du quaternaire (Tervuren, 1962), 382; M. Posnansky, "Bantu Genesis," Uganda Journal, 25(1961), 86-93. Compare this with his slightly earlier "Pottery Types in East Africa," JAH, 2(1961), 183-85.

173. Posnansky, "Bantu Genesis," 91-92.

157. 158. 159. 160. 161 . 162. 163. 164. 165. 166.

I b id I b i d I b i d Ib id I b i d Ib id I b i d I b i d I b i d D. C

168. 169. 170. 171 . 172.

1959) , I b i d . , I b i d . , I b i d . , I b i d . , J . Hie



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174. (London, 1959), 130-31. 175. Wrigley, "Speculations on the Economic Prehistory of Africa,"

JAR, 1(1960), 196. The text dates from November 1958 and was presented to the African History Seminar at SOAS. Minutes AH/58/4.

176. Ibid., 202, and interventions in the SOAS seminar on 14 January and 18 February, 1959.

177. Ibid., 198, and SOAS seminar session 14 January 1959 for his source, Malcolm Guthrie.

178. SOAS seminar session. 179. Session of 28 January 1959, amplified in the sessions of

4 February, 11 February, 18 February, and 4 March. 180. Proto-Bantu had a term for iron, said Guthrie at the seminar

on 28 January. Oliver's formulation of what became the London paradigm first occurred on 18 February 1959 at the seminar.

181. Concluding statement of the session of 4 March. 182. G.W.B. Huntingford, "The Peopling of the Interior of East

Africa by its Modern Inhabitants" in R. Oliver and G. Mathew, History of East Africa, I (London, 1963), 58-93, esp. 81-92.

183. (Harmondsworth, 1962), 29-32. There are some shifts in Oliver's position in later editions of this very influential textbook.

184. Guthrie, "Some Developments in the Prehistory of the Bantu Languages," JAR, 3(1962), 273-82; idem, "Bantu Origins: A Tentative New Hypothesis," Journal of African Languages, 1(1962), 9-21; idem, "A Two-Stage Method of Comparative Bantu Study," African Language Studies, 3(1962), 1-24. Compare with his earlier "Problemes de genetique linguis-tique: la question du Bantou commun," Travaux de I'Institut de Linguistique de I'Universite de Paris, 4(1959), 83-92.

185. Guthrie, "Some Developments," 276. 186. Idem, "Bantu Origins," 16. 187. Hem, "Some Developments," 279-82. 188. H. Deschamps, L'Afrique noire preaoloniale, (Paris, 1962),

29-31. As a Que sais-je? volume its impact in the Francophone world was great.

189. Cornevin, Histoire de I'Afrique, I, Des Origines au XVIe

Sieale, (Paris, 1966), 377-78. Compare with his Histoire des peuples de I'Afrique noire, (Paris, 1960), 151-52, where he accepted Greenberg but saw the Bantu expansion as circumventing the forest, rather like Johnston or like some recent speculations. By 1966 the cause of Bantu expansion was seen to be the desiccation of the Sahara, a point taken from Clark, "The Prehistoric Origins of African Culture," JAH, 5(1964), 181-82.

190. For instance see R. Rotberg, A Political History of Tropical Africa (London, 1965), 5n2 and 52n66. The information there may date from 1962.

191. R. Oliver, "The Problem of Bantu expansion," JAH, 7(1966), 361-76, first delivered as a lecture in 1965 at the Royal Society of Arts in London. Cf. R. Oliver, "Cameroun —



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322 JAN VANSINA

The Bantu Cradleland," Spraahe und Gesohiahte in Afrika, 1(1979), 7.

193. M. Posnansky, "Bantu Genesis: Archaeological Reflexions," JAR, 9(1968), 1-11. See also his "The Iron Age in East Africa" in W.W. Bishop and D.J. Clark, eds, Background to Evolution in Africa (Chicago, 1967), 629-49, and J. Hiernaux, La Diversite Humaine en Afrique Subsaharienne (Brussels, 1968). See Hiernaux, The People of Africa (New York, 1974), 175-89.

194. J. Hiernaux, "Bantu Expansion: The Evidence from Physical Anthropology Confronted with Linguistics and Archaeological Evidence, JAH, 9(1968), 505-15.

195. Neither had up to then published a formal rebuttal. Meeussen was waiting for Guthrie's magnum opus to be completed and so probably was Greenberg. But meanwhile both had expressed their misgivings and objections orally.

196. B.M. Fagan and R. Oliver, "Wenner-Gren Research Conference on Bantu Origins in Sub-Saharan Africa (Summary Report and Recommendations)," African language Review, 7(1968), 140-46; T. Grundemann, "Wenner-Gren Conference on Bantu Origins," Bulletin of the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom (1968), 1-9. Other information from my own conference notes.

197. T. Huffman, "The Early Iron Age and the Spread of the Bantu," South African Archaeological Bulletin, 25(1970), 3-21.

198. J.D. Clark, The Prehistory of Africa (London, 1970), 210-14; idem, "African Prehistory" in D. Dalby, Language and History in Africa (London, 1970), 1-19 esp. 9-15. This volume contains papers presented at the African History Seminar of SOAS from 1967 to 1969. On Bantu expansion it also contains M. Guthrie's "Contributions from Comparative Bantu Studies to the Prehistory of Africa," 20-49, and W.M. Mann's "Internal Relationships of the Bantu Languages: Prospects for Topological Research," 133-45, which prefigures A. Henrici's later and revolutionary findings.

199. J. Vansina, "Inner Africa," in A.M. Josephy, ed., The Horizon History of Africa (New York, 1971), 261-66.

200. Ibid., 265. 201. C. Ehret, "Cattle-Keeping and Milking in Eastern and

Southern African History: The Linguistic Evidence," JAH, 8(1967), 1-17.

202. Idem, "Bantu Origins and History: Critique and Interpretation," Transafriaan Journal of History, 2(1972), 1-10.

203. J. Greenberg, "Linguistic Evidence Regarding Bantu Origins," JAH, 13(1972), 189-216.

204. (New York, 1968), 57-114; H. Gailey, History of Africa from Earliest Times to 1800 (New York, 1970), 29-31.

205. (Paris, 1970), 355-63. 206. W.G.L. Randies, "La civilisation bantou: son essor et

son declin," Annales: Economies, Societes, Civilisations 29(1974), 267-81.

207. B. Heine, "Zur genetische Gliederung der Bantu-sprachen,"



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Afrika-Ubersee, 56(1973) 164-85; A. Henrici, "Numerical Classification of Bantu Languages," African Language Studies, 14(1973), 82-104.

208. B. Heine, "Gliederung," 164-70. 209. Ibid., 172-75. 210. Ibid., 181-82. 211. A. Coupez, E. Evrard, and J. Vansina, "Classification d'un

echantillon de langues bantoues d'apres la lexicostatis-tique, Afrioana Linguistiaa, 6(1975), 133-58. Data for the project had been assembled from 1954 onwards. The conclusions about migrations are exclusively Coupez1s.

212. Ehret, "Patterns of Bantu and Central Sudanic Settlement in Central and Southern Africa, Trans african Journal of History, 3(1973), 1-71.

213. A. Coupez, "Classification," 152. 214. B . Heine, H. Hoff, and R. Vossen, "Neuere Ergebnisse zur

Territorialgeschichte der Bantu," in W.J. Mohlig, F. Rottland, and B. Heine, Zur Sprachgeschichte und Ethnohistorie in Afrika (Berlin, 1977), 57-70.

215. The main publication of this conference will be C. Bouquiaux, G. Manessy, and J. Voorhoeve, L'expansion bantoue. I have seen most of the linguistic papers, while some others, such as the anthropologists A. Kuper and P. Van Leynseele, or archeologists such as N. David, P. de Maret, and F. Van Noten kindly sent me copies of their papers, for which I am very grateful. Information about A40 and A60 from Dr. J. Voorhoeve, confirmed by others.

216. P. Bennett, and J. Sterk, "South Central Niger Congo: A Reclassification," Studies in African Linguistics, 8(1977), 241-73.

217. D. Dalby, "The Prehistorical Implications of Guthrie's Comparative Bantu," JAR, 16(1975) 481-502; 17(1976), 1-28. Since then Dalby has abandoned the idea of genetic relationships between languages altogether. See his Language Map of Africa and the Adjacent Islands (London, 1977).

218. Oliver and Fagan, Africa in the Iron Age, 78-79. 219. Ibid., 32. 220. Guthrie, Comparative Bantu (4 vols.: Farnborough, 1967-71)

1: no. 74/21, 74/25; 2: 83/24. 221. Guthrie, "Contributions from Comparative Bantu Studies to

the Prehistory of Africa" in Dalby, Language and History, 28-30, 44-45.

222. Oliver and Fagan, Africa in the Iron Age, 73-75. 223. P. de Maret and Y. Nsuka, "History of Bantu Metallurgy:

Some Linguistic Aspects," History in Africa, 4(1977) 43-66. 224. J. Hiernaux and A.M. Gauthier, "Comparaison des affinites

Unguistiques et biologiques de douze populations de langue bantu," Cuhiers d''etudes africaines, 66/67(1977), 241-53.

225. R. Oliver and B. Fagan, "The Emergence of Bantu Africa" in The Cambridge History of Africa,II,From a.500 B.C. to A.D. 1050, (Cambridge, 1978), 342-409, 750-56.

226. Ibid., 357-59, 405-06.



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324 JAN VANSINA

227. Ibid., 358. 228. Oliver, "Cameroun," 7. 229. Ibid., 10. 230. Ibid., 17. Metallurgy, he now surmises, derived from the

Upper Uele. His argument is partly based on resemblances between newly-discovered pottery from that area and Early Iron Age pottery of Urewe ware as in R.C. Soper, "Resemblances Between East African Early Iron Age Pottery and Recent Vessels from the North-Eastern Congo," Azania, 6(1971) 233-41.

231. R.M. Derricourt, "Classification and Culture Change in Late Post-Pleistocene South Africa" in C. Renfrew, ed., The Explanation of Culture Change: Models in Prehistory (New York, 1973), 625-31.

232. P. Schmidt, "A New Look at Interpretations of the Early Iron Age in East Africa," History in Africa, 2(1975), 127-36.

233. Ibid., 133-35. 234. D.W. Phillipson, "The Chronology of the Iron Age in Bantu

Africa," JAE, 16(1975), 321-42. 235. Idem, (London, 1977), 102-230. Summary of his ten stages

of Bantu expansion, 227-30. See also idem, "Archaeology and Bantu Linguistics," World Archaeology, 8(1976), 65-82; idem, "The Spread of the Bantu Language," Scientific American, 236(1977), 106-14. Cf. also his "The Early Iron Age in Eastern and Southern Africa: A Critical Reappraisal," Azania, 11(1976), 1-24.

236. Idem, Later Prehistory, 172-79. 237. See, for instance, P. de Maret, F. Van Note.n, and D. Cahen,

"Radiocarbon Dates from West Central Africa: A Synthesis," JAE, 18(1977), 497-501.

238. F. Van Noten, "The Early Iron Age in the Interlacustrine Region. The Diffusion of Iron Technology," paper presented at the Viviers Conference.

239. N. David, "The Archaeological Background of Cameroonian History," paper presented at the Viviers Conference.

240. Lwanga Lunyiigo, "The Bantu Problem Reconsidered," Current Anthropology, 17(1976), 282-86.

241. R. Gramsley, "Expansion of Bantu-speakers versus Development of Bantu Language and African Culture in situ: An Archaeologist's Perspective," South African Archaeological Bulletin, 33(1978), 107-12.

242. P. de Maret, "Bribes, debris et bricolage," paper presented at the Viviers Conference.

243. W. Mohlig, "The Bantu Nucleus: Its Conditional Nature and Its Prehistorical Significance," Spraahe und Geschiahte in Afrika, 1(1979), 109-42. Earlier articles by Mohlig in the same vein are "Guthries Beltrag zur Bantuistik aus heutiger Sicht," Anthropos, 71(1976), 673-715; "Zur friihen Siedlung-sgeschichte der Savannen-Bantu aus authistorischer Sicht" in Mohlig, Rottland, and Heine, Sprachgeschichte, 166-93. His "The Problem of a True Historical Classification of the Bantu Languages," submitted to the African Linguistics



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Colloquium of Leiden in 1978 is expected in due course. 244. A Kuper and P. Van Leynseele, "Social Anthropology and the

'Bantu Expansion'," Africa, 48(1978), 335-52. 245. J. Greenberg, The Languages of Africa (Bloomington, 1963),

38, calls it a "relatively recent movement" on the basis of the wide extension of Bantu languages and the relatively small differentiation among them. But strong conversion also exists among many Australian languages, which must have been spread over the whole of Australia millennia ago. See R.M.W. Dixon, "The Nature and Development of Australian Languages," Annual Review of Anthropology, 8(1979), 433. The rate of differentiation is not necessarily constant as, e.g., the development of English shows. On this point Johnston may be right; see the first part of this article, 312.

246. Mb'hlig, "Bantu Nucleus," 123-26, 131-33. 247. Hiernaux, "Bantu Expansion." 248. Hiernaux and Gauthier, "Comparaison." 249. T. Ranger, "Towards a Usable African Past" in C. Fyfe, ed.,

African Studies Since 1945 (London, 1976), 21. 250. L. Casson, "Who First Crossed the Oceans?" in L. Casson,

Mysteries of the Vast (New York, 1977), 30, mentions the same onomatopoeia: (kuk) as Polynesian and Peruvian terms for "chicken." On the other hand some onomatopoeia, such as those used for "bell" in Africa, are so numerous and variable that such terms may have value as proof because so very many possibilities exist. On fowl consider also the English dock, French coq, both very close to kukl

251. Murdock, Africa, 2. 252. Ibid., 271. 253. R. Anttila, An Introduction to Historical and Comparative

Linguistics (New York, 1972), 386-87. 254. For the Mambese see F. de Maeyer, "Een eigenaardig geval

van tweetaligheid op de taalgrens der Soeden- en Ban.toetalen in Belglsch Kongo," Kongo-Overzee, 9(1943), 173-75.

255. Anttila, Introduction, 173-74. 256. J.C. Winter, "Language Shift Among the Aasax, a Hunter-

Gatherer Tribe in Tanzania," Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika, 1(1979), 175-204.

257. Dalby, "Prehistoric Implications," 487-89, 501.

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