The Bantu expansion
•The Bantu expansion
is outside the general area of this paper.
•However, Bantoid
and Bantu languages are part of the pattern of Benue-Congo
•The Bantoid
languages, which occupy the Grassfields of Cameroon and areas along the Nigeria-Cameroon borderland are highly internally diversified compared
with Bantu and must
thus be older
•The Bantu expansion
is probably to be dated around 3500
BP, to judge by the early appearance of pottery along rivers in Cameroun/Gabon
•Recent excavations
(and finds of millet etc.) in Southern Cameroun suggest we do not understand this environment as well as we had imagined