ArticleScience advances2021
Population collapse in Congo rainforest from 400 CE urges reassessment of the Bantu Expansion.
Article in Science advances, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed.
- Revisiting the African mtDNA landscape through complete mitochondrial genomes.Communications biology · 2026Article
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- Cultural, economic, and settlement shifts over the last 9,000 years at Kakapel Rockshelter, Western Kenya.PloS one · 2025Article
- Landscape of fear: indirect effects of conflict can account for large-scale population declines in non-state societies.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Article
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- Whole genomes from Angola and Mozambique inform about the origins and dispersals of major African migrations.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Dense sampling of ethnic groups within African countries reveals fine-scale genetic structure and extensive historical admixture.Science advances · 2023Article
- Genomic perspectives on human dispersals during the Holocene.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Genetic structure correlates with ethnolinguistic diversity in eastern and southern Africa.American journal of human genetics · 2022Article
- Phylogeographic analysis of the Bantu language expansion supports a rainforest route.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Article
- Population interconnectivity over the past 120,000 years explains distribution and diversity of Central African hunter-gatherers.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Human behaviour and climate-linked fluctuations in the rainforests of West-Central Africa.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The present-day distribution of Bantu languages is commonly thought to reflect the early stages of the Bantu Expansion, the greatest migration event in African prehistory. Using 1149 radiocarbon dates linked to 115 pottery styles recovered from 726 sites throughout the Congo rainforest and adjacent areas, we show that this is not the case. Two periods of more intense human activity, each consisting of an expansion phase with widespread pottery styles and a regionalization phase with many more local pottery styles, are separated by a widespread population collapse between 400 and 600 CE followed by major resettlement centuries later. Coinciding with wetter climatic conditions, the collapse was possibly promoted by a prolonged epidemic. Comparison of our data with genetic and linguistic evidence further supports a spread-over-spread model for the dispersal of Bantu speakers and their languages.
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