Zimbabwean folk move about like their ancestors, the Bantu people, as they travel and settle, from place to place. It is in the Zimbabwean’s blood to migrate and make residence in whatsoever place seen fit for forage, per se.
How did the Bantu move? The Bantu expansion was a millennia-long series of physical migrations, a diffusion of language and knowledge out into and in from neighbouring populations, and a creation of new societal groups involving inter-marriage among communities and small groups moving to communities and small groups moving to new areas.
Bantu Speakers – Bantu-speakers developed novel methods of agriculture and metalworking which allowed people to colonize new areas with widely varying ecologies in greater densities than hunting and foraging permitted.
Meanwhile in Eastern and Southern Africa Bantu-speakers adopted livestock husbandry from other peoples they encountered, and in turn passed it to hunter- foragers, so that herding reached the far south several centuries before Bantu-speaking migrants did. Archaeological, linguistic and genetic evidence all support the idea that the Bantu expansion was one of the most significant human migrations and cultural transformations within the past few thousand years.
It is unclear when exactly the spread of Bantu-speakers began from their core area as hypothesized ca. 5000 years ago. By 3500 years ago (1500 B.C.) in the west, Bantu-speaking communities had reached the great Central African rainforest, and by 2500 year ago (500 B.C.) pioneering groups had emerged into the savannahs to the south, in what are now the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and Zambia.
Great Lakes to KwaZulu-Natal – Another stream of migration, moving east, by 3000 years ago (1000 B.C.) was creating a major new population centre near the Great Lakes of East Africa, where a rich environment supported a dense population.
Movements by small groups to the southeast from the Great Lakes region were more rapid, with initial settlements widely dispersed near the coast and near rivers, due to comparatively harsh farming conditions in areas further from water.
Pioneering groups had reached modern KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa by A.D. 300 along the coast and the modern Northern Province (encompassed within the former province of the Transvaal) by A.D. 500.
Bantu People of Great Zimbabwe – Between the 13th and 15th centuries relatively powerful Bantu-speaking states on a scale larger than local chiefdoms began to emerge, in the Great Lakes region, in the savannah south of the Central African rainforest, and on the Zambezi River where the Monomatapa kings built the famous Great Zimbabwe complex.
Such processes of state-formation occurred with increasing frequency from the 16th century onward.
They were probably due to denser population, which led to more specialized divisions of labour, including military power, while making emigration more difficult, to increased trade among African communities and with European, Swahili and Arab traders on the coasts, to technological developments in economic activity, and to new techniques in the political-spiritual ritualization of royalty as the source of national strength and health.
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