their migration point started from the areas around Eastern Nigeria and Western Nigeria

Tony Spike:
1. Can we safely assume that the actual Bantu migration started from Central Sudan or the Nigeria/Cameroun areas?

2. Could the Bantu people be the actual dwellers of the once flourishing Sahara areas in the ancient times?

3. What could have pushed them to migrate deep into the African jungle apart from war and famine?

4. Why didn't the Bantu peoples chose to migrate into West Africa? Could they have encountered stiff resistance from the people around this areas?

5. If indeed the migration started from Nigeria/Cameroun areas, what could have been the major source(s) of the supposed migration?

6. Can we accurately say the Bantu migration is the largest in the African history?


I would like historians and interested individuals on Nairaland to make substansial contributions to this topic. I think it deserves a front page treatment too, Seun. Thank you very much!

Could the Bantu people be the actual dwellers of the once flourishing Sahara areas in the ancient times?

wikipedia:
Ummah (Arabic: أمة‎) is an Arabic word meaning "nation" or "community". It is commonly used to mean either the collective nation of Islamic state, or (in the context of pan-Arabism) the whole Arab world. In the context of Pan-Islamism, the word ummah is used to mean the diaspora[citation needed] or Commonwealth[citation needed] of the Believers (أمة المؤمنين ummat al-muʼminīn), and thus the whole Muslim people

Origin

The phrase Ummah Wāhidah in the Quran (أمة واحدة, 'One Community') refers to all of the Islamic world unified. The Quran says: “You [Muslims] are the best nation brought out for Mankind, commanding what is righteous (معروف Maʻrūf, lit. 'recognized [as good]') and forbidding what is wrong (منكر Munkar, lit. 'unrecognized [as good]')…” [3:110].

On the other hand, in Arabic Ummah can also be used in the more Western sense of nation, for example: Al-Umam Al-Muttaḥidah, the United Nations.

The Constitution of Medina, an early document said to have been negotiated by Muhammad in AD 622 with the leading clans of Medina, explicitly refers to Jewish and pagan citizens of Medina as members of the Ummah.[1][2][3][4]

In modern Hebrew, the word Ummah (אוּמָה) means "nation", from the root[citation needed] ʿam (עַם), or "people".

snydergp: I strongly disagree with the one who wrote that Khoisan and xhosa people came from the west africa cause that's a total lie and misrepresentation of any truth.

Khoisan people people's roots can be traced over 200,000years ago in South africa, Namibia, Botswana even as far as Angola and parts of Congo. The khiosan rock paintings in the western and northern areas in South Africa are more then 50,000 years old and is even older then the Egyptian parimids itself. Khiosan people are southern africa's first known enhabitants and is widely seen by scientist and geologist as one of the worlds first people and civilizations so please son don't come with your foot-foot nonesense.

South Africa and parts of Kenya and Ethiopia are considered as the cradils of mankind.

South Africa and Kenya showed that humankind had differrent stages of developement and that took place it the same time.

West and North Africa according too well reseached data was never the origin of mankind but Kenya and South Africa was so do your research transparently before u post your BAFOONARY here for others to read.

Don't believe in the hype son educate your mind than you can have a debate on the origins of bantu people. Maybe that's why Nigerian universities has some of the least published researched papers in the world on early human developement. Sorry but please go climb back in that tree you jumped out son

19naia: the various tribes of africa cannot be summarized by what is most available in researched history..Researched history becomes so dim as time goes further back and summarizing bantu people migrations by language distributions has to go back 50 thousand years where language history in Africa is estimated around 200,000 years....It must be considered that before the Islamic crusades sent migrations across africa even through the time of Mansa Musa more recently,there were migrations around africa during the drying out of the great lakes of the sahara of which lake chad is one of the last...The misterious Nok people would provide missing links of migrations and then 4000-6000 year old settlements found across southern nigeria,the saharah has so much buried truth under it as latest satelite imaging from NASA has shown...The bantu or any other tribal group may not have been known by the modern BANTU name if we consider 50,000 year old history and the number of migrations around africa that have happend in that time...50,000 yr old migrations are linked from africa to asia where words similar to yoruba and other african languages flourish,like the word OKURIN in yoruba for man:as the word OKARI in japanese for man and not to mention the many dialects of china..The word Okari has even migrated from japan through the pacific into hawaii where it trans morphed to the word Okane for man and King...Its not enough to learn one african language to see the extent of african language migration globally..Even from yoruba alone,i have to consider several yoruba dialects to compare to old english and latin based words..Phono as in phonate to make a sound has no real counterpart in yoruba but Say or sound has counter part for "so" which means say in youruba..S and O are the primary cognates for the word sound and say and sonic...In my fathers Akure Ondo state dialect,they say "fon" for "so" and it means the same as in to say or sound..."fon" is also the primary cognate for phono or phonate....The "SO" version is more germanic with cognates such as sound,say,sonic,spiel,speak etc all retaining the early roots by starting off with the S as the primary cognate....the "fon" version is related to the latin language with phono,phone,phonate ,etc....There are too many of these types of cognate relations to european,asian languages to be coincidence and as such deduces that africa was the likely root of language, but the neccessary migrations to carry it out of africa predate 50,000 years with some clues pointing to 200,000 years....The same type cognate linking system is also used to decipher links in genetic language contained in everyones body and its no coincidence that language architecture trans morphs with similar system to Genes...When people migrate and their features change, it affects say the shape of the mouth cavity and the nasal cavity and it can affect pronounciations that they originaly had over thousands of years...I can even see in USA after white people of europe took the country over,they speak and pronounce their english much differently after only 400 or so years...I can even see the difference in the resting shape of the mouth of a lifetime london english speaker and a lifetime USA english speaker with the same european ancestory ,and the differneces in mouth resting shape goes for german and other european region migrants to USA...I try to magine the extent of change to language and body features after 50,000 years of migration.... VERY NICE TOPIC HERE ALL YOU THREAD CONTRIBUTORS AND AT BEST WE HAVE MANY CLUES BUT EVEN MORE MYSTERY TO UNCOVER...Thanks

Tony Spike:
That's quite a lot of research you have up there, sir. Talking about the language and tonal variations around the world, I read recently that Africa has largest variety of tonal inflexions compared to other parts of the world. This revelation could also confirm that migration started from Africa. On a serious note, I support physicsQED's assertion that language is a continuum, knowing where it all started is a pretty wild guess, but Africa is a highly probable starting point.

PhysicsQED: I don't think they were "influenced" at all, because the way I see it, diversification/differentiation of languages was the reason for the split of Bantu from non-Bantu and the Bantu languages are just a more recent unique subgroup of "Niger Congo" that attained a very large size/population of speakers.

Looking at the specific languages you mentioned (Yoruba, Edo, and Igbo), when either read or pronounced, they seem very different from (many) Bantu languages, and this difference (which is apparent not just for Yoruba, Edo, and Igbo, but for other West African languages) is probably why there was some initial resistance on the part of professional linguists to claiming that there was some sort of deep relationship between West African languages and Bantu languages, before they finally joined them. I believe there is a relationship, as attested to by the shared roots of several words, but this relationship doesn't mean that words shared between Bantu languages and non-Bantu West African languages are due to influence of one upon the other, but just that, sharing a recent origin in the same place, they diverged from a common root. However, some other language groups came from the same relatively recent common root as well.

A good example is the word you brought up in your original post, the word "omo/umu" meaning "people" or "children". Far from being a Bantu or Proto Bantu remnant/aspect of Niger-Congo languages that was derived in non-Bantu West African languages from "muntu" or variations on "muntu", I would actually see it as a remnant of an even older original language from which Niger Congo languages and Afroasiatic languages emerged. Look at the word and compare it with Hebrew and Arabic (Afroasiatic languages):


Yoruba:

omo - child (omo is also child for Edo and umu is child for Igbo)

Edo:

omwan - person

emwan - people

Igbo:

umunna - children/descendants (umu) of the same father (nna)

Arabic:

ummah - commmunity or nation

Hebrew:

ummah - nation




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ummah


There are other examples, of course. Another one: iya (Yoruba) - mother, nwanyi (Igbo) - woman/female, iye (Edo) - mother, eym (Hebrew) - mother

And there are others, though it would take quite a while to dig them all up.


There is a very fierce (kind of) debate I've come across that is still ongoing where some anthropologists and linguists are trying desperately to "separate" Afroasiatic from other African language groups and group Proto-Afroasiatic with proto-Indo-European or just consider Afroasiatic an isolated language family separate from other African language groups - and part of this debate revolves around (not always explicitly, but it's a relevant factor) whether one specific group, the Egyptians, are to be seen as some unique East African group with Western Asiatic influence or as some kind of "racially" Middle Eastern/Semitic/Western Asiatic group with East African influence - an argument which I don't think that those trying to change/distort the existing classification will win in the end. You can't just have Yorubas, Edos, and Igbos, totally and undoubtedly black African groups, sharing some roots for very fundamental words (not obtainable through trade) with some Semitic languages without Proto-Afroasiatic sharing the same ultimate origin with Proto-Niger-Congo. The weird thing about the debate is that it is rarely acknowledged that human languages are not discrete, but form a kind of continuum with languages in between different extremes or endpoints with respect to different aspects/features and words, so classifying a language as being closer to one group than another does not really cordon off that group into a "separate" branch of humanity like some people involved in that debate are making it seem. At the end of the day, every group is just a subgroup of an older original group until you go back to the very start of humanity.

Tony Spike: One of the easiest ways of identifying Bantu-linked cultures language similarities in the spelling of man, person and child/children. Another way as you have mentioned is by observing the generic similarities in the naming of towns/cities/villages right from Igboland, through Congo, Angola, Namibia, Botswana and down to South Africa. There is an obvious and ingenious way the ancient Bantu migrants have left the trace of their existence all over Africa. It was as if they were fleeing from something very disastrous at the North of Africa. Here is a list of spellings for several Bantu groups around Africa, it's simply amazing. I got the original table from http://www.kaa-umati.co.uk/bantu_rosetta_stones_part_c.htm. I have however modified the table, based on my research, to include countries where these Bantu language groups exist. Enjoy!!!


BANTU GROUP SPELLING FOR PERSON BY COUNTRIES

Kiswahili-Bantu Mtu DRC, Tanzania, Angola, Mozambique, Kenya, Somalia and Rwanda

Bemba Bantu Muntu Zambia, DRC

Lingala-Bantu Moto DRC, CAR, Republic of Congo

Oshindonka-Bantu OMuntu Namibia, Angola

Zulu-Bantu Umuntu South Africa, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique

Luvale-Bantu Mutu Zambia, Angola

Rukwangali-Bantu Muntu Namibia, Angola

Setswana-Bantu Motho Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe

Tsonga-Bantu Munhu Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe

Southern-Sotho Motho South Africa, Lesotho

Chichewa-Bantu Munthu Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe

Ruknyankore-Rukiga- Bantu Omuntu Uganda

Lega-Bantu Monto DRC

Thimbukushu-Bantu Munu Namibia, Angola, Botswana , Zambia

Kuria-Bantu Omonto Tanzania, Kenya

Shona-Bantu Munhu Mozambique, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Zambia, Botswana



and now adding,

Igbo [b]Umu (Children) Nigeria (East)
Yoruba Omo (Children) Nigeria (West)
Bini Omo (Children) Nigeria (South)
Igala Oma (Children) Nigeria (Central)
[/b]
Surprising, the ancient Egyptian way of spelling MAN is MTU. Guess what? The modern English word for it is also MAN.

some-girl:



coincidence in my opinion.

We'd have to examine a fair amount of words to establish a relationship between west african ethnic groups and bantu speaking groups.