SE Asian food-crops and the Bantu expansion
The early introduction of these humid-zone
cultigens must have had important consequences for African prehistory.
The region of greatest somatic diversity
of these crops corresponds well to the area of the Bantu, Bantoid and Benue-Congo-speaking
peoples. Johnston
(1919-1922) originally proposed the
idea that the Bantu
homeland was to be located in present-day Cameroun. The date generally advanced for this is >3000
BP.
Although the route travelled by SE Asian
cultigens remains quite obscure, it seems credible that their impact on existing
agricultural societies
in the Bight of Benin must have been considerable.
It is likely that a combination of iron
technology and three new high-yielding staples that could be grown successfully in the
tropical rain-forest
permitted the second, and most dramatic, phase of Bantu expansion.
New finds in Southern Cameroun now provide
direct evidence for agricultural
tools in the rainforest (Eggert et al. 2006). Moving South and East, presumably along the waterways
the Bantu seem to have rapidly colonised the equatorial forest.
The conjunction of these crops and at
least some iron tools to make easier the clearing of the forest may have been the combination
of factors
that permitted the colonisation of half the continent in a relatively short period of time.