17 Sept 2002

Creoles

  • islanders, Cape Coloureds, Afrikaners
  • Creole languages: Afrikaaner, KrioAfrican Paleoanthropology

Paleoanthropology in Africa

  • Ardipithecus
  • Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy)
  • other Australopithecines
  • S. African caves, E. African volcanic areas
  • Homo habilis, erectus, sapiens (archaic)
  • Anat Mod Humans ca. 100K at Klasies Riv Mouth, S Africa

Bantu Expansion

  • sources of Afr history = oral trad, Greeks, Arabs, colonial records, but for ancient history, linguistic analysis very imp
  • historical linguistics does both content analysis (comparing dif languages' terms allows reconstruction of some aspects of history, as Bantu e.g. shows) and glottochronology (estimating times of divergence by analyzing agreement in core vocabularies)
  • Bantu spoken by 150 mill; similarities in phonemes in core vocab and grammar
  • Bantu languages radiate out f/Cameroun Nigeria like spokes, so this is the Bantu origin
  • ancestral Bantu had words for fishing, yam & palm oil but not cereals; so root crop cultivators, fishers
  • one group goes across northern forests towards Great lakes of E Afr; probably in Great Lakes area by 1000 BC; this branch picks up cereal cultivation, cattle and sheep herding from Nilo-Saharan speakers
  • other come down thru Cameroun; develop words for goat-cattle-axe; develop metalworking (smithing); arch sites show their spread to lower Congo by 400 BC
  • Bantu include great kingdoms of Zimbabwe (formerly Southern Rhodesia); Zulu empire of 19th cent SAf; Swahili culture

Social dynamics

  • Lamphear & Falola give 1 version of relations be/Bantus & indigines; historian Vansina contests idea of actual population spread, arguing rather for movement of language and cultural traits "like ripples in a pond:"
    "In sum, there is no longer a cogent argument in favor of a Bantu migration...In the case of language shift the indigines usually became first bilingual and then lost their original language only several generations later. This view implies that the communities using the Bantu language held either a decisive demographic advantage or enjoyed a huge prestige over the indigenous language... Where does such prestige stem from? The technological differential, especially in early times, was small. Did Bantu-speakers have a monopoly on some form of trade? Were they conquerors, or somehow superior in religious matters? There is no evidence so far..."