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Zaire HUMAN ORIGINS
Archaeological evidence of and research on past
societies in
Zaire are scanty, in no small part because of the tropical
climate
and the rain forest covering most of the northern half of
Zaire and
encompassing much of the Congo River basin. Nonetheless,
equatorial
Africa has been inhabited since at least the middle Stone
Age. Late
Stone Age cultures flourished in the southern savanna
after ca.
10,000 B.C. and remained viable until the arrival of
Bantu-speaking
peoples during the first millennium B.C. Evidence suggests
that
these Stone Age populations lived in small groups, relying
for
subsistence on hunting and gathering and the use of stone
tools.
Some of these groups may have remained long enough in one
vicinity
to be considered permanent residents, but others moved,
following
game along the extensive river network and through the
rain forest.
The development of food-producing communities in Zaire
is
associated with the expansion of Bantu-speaking peoples.
In a long
series of migrations beginning ca. 1,000 B.C. and lasting
well into
the mid-first millennium A.D., Bantu-speakers dispersed
from a
point west of the Ubangi-Congo River swamp across the
forests and
savannas of modern Zaire. A northern group moved
northeastward
around the swamp and across the northern regions of Zaire
and
settled in the forest zone. Meanwhile, other groups moved
south and
southwest, the former then migrating up the Congo as well
as into
the inner part of the Congo Basin, while the southwestern
Bantuspeakers spread into modern Gabon, Congo, and lower Zaire.
It was apparently after these movements that Bantu
speakers
spread south and southeastward across the southern Zairian
savanna
as far as present-day Angola and Zambia, thereafter
continuing to
expand into eastern and southern Africa. These migrating
groups
generally brought with them a technology superior to that
of the
existing inhabitants. The Bantu speakers were better able
to
exploit an area's resources through the practice of
agriculture,
based on yam and oil palm cultivation, and, as time went
on, by
adopting iron tools and technology.
Bantu-speaking peoples settled in the rain forests and
southern
savannas. Non-Bantu-speaking peoples are found in the
grasslands
north of the forest. Information on the settlement dates
and routes
of migration of these peoples remains vague at best, but
they seem
to have dwelt at first in the northern grasslands and only
later
penetrated the forest. Since perhaps late in the first
millennium
B.C., they have intermingled with the Bantu-speaking
groups who
preceded them, in the process creating a complex ethnic
mosaic
(see Ethnic
Groups
, ch. 2).
The significance of some of these peoples extends
beyond purely
linguistic considerations. The peoples speaking Central
Sudanic
languages brought with them a new food complex involving
cereal
cultivation and herding. A related food pattern based on
cereals
and hunting was separately introduced to southeastern
Zaire from
East Africa after ca. A.D. 100. Cereal cultivation,
hunting, and
herding were much better adapted to conditions in the
savannas than
the oil palm and yam farming that the Bantu speakers had
brought
from western Africa, and, hence, spread rapidly,
especially in the
southern grasslands. The banana, another important food
crop, was
introduced, apparently, from southern Asia into East
Africa in the
early centuries of the present era and thereafter diffused
across
Central Africa. These new food sources allowed for greater
settlement and population growth in the grasslands; they
also
contributed in no small way to the growth of trade and to
increasingly complex social and political organization
among those
peoples who dwelt in the savannas.
Data as of December 1993
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