Unlike most other biological species, humans can use cultural innovations to occupy a range of environments, raising the intriguing question of whether human migrations move relatively independently of habitat or show preferences for familiar ones. The Bantu expansion that swept out of West Central Africa beginning ∼5,000 y ago is one of the most influential cultural events of its kind, eventually spreading over a vast geographical area a new way of life in which farming played an increasingly important role. We use a new dated phylogeny of ∼400 Bantu languages to show that migrating Bantu-speaking populations did not expand from their ancestral homeland in a "random walk" but, rather, followed emerging savannah corridors, with rainforest habitats repeatedly imposing temporal barriers to movement. When populations did move from savannah into rainforest, rates of migration were slowed, delaying the occupation of the rainforest by on average 300 y, compared with similar migratory movements exclusively within savannah or within rainforest by established rainforest populations. Despite unmatched abilities to produce innovations culturally, unfamiliar habitats significantly alter the route and pace of human dispersals.human dispersal | phylogeography | phylogenetics | languages | Bantu

Bantu languages are spoken by about 310 million Africans, yet the genetic history of Bantu-speaking populations remains largely unexplored. We generated genomic data for 1318 individuals from 35 populations in western central Africa, where Bantu languages originated. We found that early Bantu speakers first moved southward, through the equatorial rainforest, before spreading toward eastern and southern Africa. We also found that genetic adaptation of Bantu speakers was facilitated by admixture with local populations, particularly for the and loci. Finally, we identified a major contribution of western central African Bantu speakers to the ancestry of African Americans, whose genomes present no strong signals of natural selection. Together, these results highlight the contribution of Bantu-speaking peoples to the complex genetic history of Africans and African Americans.

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The present article examines whether Late Holocene climate-induced vegetation changes in the Central African forest block may have facilitated the Bantu Expansion. This is done through a body of evidence that is not commonly used for the reconstruction of vegetation dynamics, i.e. language data. The article focuses on common Bantu vocabulary for three pioneer species abundantly present in the Central African pollen record between ca. 2500 and 2000 BP: Musanga cecropioides, Elaeis guineensis, and Canarium schweinfurthii. The geographical distribution patterns of the vernacular names for these pioneer trees add weight to the hypothesis according to which the rainforest contraction that emerged in the first millennium BC had an impact on the way Bantu languages dispersed.

It is shown how past lexicostatistic efforts eventually led to lexically-driven phylogenetic classifications of the Bantu languages. As a new case study, 95 North-West and West Bantu language varieties are sampled across geographical space, with a focus on the wider Lower Congo region. This leads to the discovery of a discrete clade within West-Coastal Bantu, which we term the Kikongo Language Cluster (KLC), a disparate continuum of closely related Bantu languages. Both a branching tree and a continuum model are called in to 'define' the true nature of the KLC, and pre-historical implications are drawn from this.

This essay interprets a classification of Africa's Bantu languages which used statistical tools guided by assumptions about farming and its chronology to analyze fresh vocabulary evidence. It shows a peeling movement from Cameroon's grassfields, into southern Cameroon, then along a savanna corridor through West Central Africa's rainforests, into the Savannahs, then to Southern Africa, the Great Lakes, and Indian Ocean coast. The clear sequence of movement masks methodological and historical factors. Language death, multilingualism, and the limits of vocabulary evidence restrain the classification's authority. ‘Transformations’ from food collecting to food producing or from no metals to full engagement with metals were mutable, unfolded at different speeds, and involved interactions with firstcomers. In Central Africa, Bantu speakers were often the first farmers and metal-users in the region but elsewhere they were commonly neither. Their arrivals did not immediately displace firstcomers. Computational methods can accommodate many of these issues.

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Objectives The predominance of Bantu languages in sub‐Saharan Africa has sparked a large debate over the processes through which they came to disperse over time and space—the “Bantu expansion.” The overall genetic similarity shown by Bantu‐speaking populations indicates that movement of people occurred too, but the extent of the correlation between genetics, linguistics and geography has been a matter of debate among scholars of different disciplines. In this work, we aim to investigate how genetic, linguistic and geographic distances relate to each other in Bantu‐speaking populations. Methods We analyzed genome‐wide SNP array data from a set of 37 Bantu and non‐Bantu‐speaking populations together with related linguistic and geographic data. Due to the complex demographic relationships resulting from events of admixture in the history of these populations, we develop and implement a method for controlling the signatures of admixture. Results Genetic distances were only minimally correlated with linguistic and geographic distances, possibly as the result of gene flow from neighboring groups into Bantu‐speaking populations. When signatures of admixture are controlled for, the correlation of genetic data with linguistic and geographic distances significantly increases. Discussion The increase of the correlation between linguistic and genetic distances after the signatures of admixture are taken into account is in agreement with a scenario of spatial co‐dispersal of languages and people. Additional specific cultural and demographic dynamics have probably further affected the relationship between language and genetics, which will be necessary to take into account when integrating multidisciplinary data to reconstruct the history of populations.