Workshop 3: New interdisciplinary perspectives on Bantu expansion

Convenors

Rebecca Grollemund (University of Reading)

Jean-Marie Hombert (DDL-CNRS)

Description

Historical linguistics provides very strong tools for reconstructing human past and this is particularly true for oral tradition populations. Reconstruction of lexical items and language classification are most commonly used to propose historical scenario concerning the place of origin, the original “culture” and the subsequent population migrations. Bantu historical linguistic data are often cited as a textbook example for the use of these techniques for reconstructing the general history of Bantu speakers.

Historical implications on the Bantu homeland and on proto-bantu culture and environment were drawn from lexical reconstructions first proposed by Guthrie (1967-71). Since the early 70’s, a large number of linguistic data have been collected and more detailed lexical reconstructions and classifications have been proposed for regional areas (mostly for the north western area). More recently, new techniques of language classifications based on phylogenetic methods have improved the external (within bantoid) and internal classifications of Bantu languages (Grollemund and Hombert, 2010a and b, 2011a, b, c; Hombert and Grollemund, 2011).

The historical picture of Bantu populations has also been completed recently by research coming from other disciplines than linguistics. The main contribution is most certainly from studies in population genetics which are providing dates of contacts between Bantu speakers and hunter-gatherers (“pygmies”) (Berniell-Lee et al, 2009; Quintana Murci et al, 2008; Patin et al, 2009; Verdu et al, 2009). Another important area of research concerns the influence of climatic change on Bantu population movements. It is likely that the change in climate which occurred 2500 years ago and which opened “corridors” in the equatorial forest could have been the triggering factor in the Bantu expansion (Bostoen, 2012; Hombert, 2012; Maley, 2004, Oslisly, 2012).

The goal of this workshop is two-fold:

• Update language classifications and lexical reconstructions (“specialized” lexicon – in particular lexicon related to agriculture) and propose a revision of bantu expansion based on linguistic data


• Compare our linguistic scenario with the proposals provided by other disciplines, in particular population genetics, archaeology and paleoclimatology.

References:

Bastin, Yvonne, André Coupez & Michael Mann. 1999. Continuity and divergence in the Bantu languages: perspectives from a lexicostatistic study. Tervuren: Musée Royal de l’Afrique Centrale. (Annales, Série in-8°, Sciences humaines 162)

Berniell-Lee, Gemma, Francesc Calafell, Elena Bosch, Evelyne Heyer, Lucas Sica, Patrick Mougiama-Daouda, Lolke Van der Veen, Jean-Marie Hombert, Lluis Quintana-Murci & David Comas. 2009. Genetic and demographic implications of the Bantu expansion: insights from human paternal lineages. Molecular biology and evolution 26(7). 1581-1589.

Blench, Roger. 2006. Archaeology, linguistics and the African past. Lanham: Altamira.

Bostoen, Koen. 2006. What comparative Bantu pottery vocabulary may tell us about early human settlement in the Inner Congo Basin. Afrique & Histoire 5(1). 221-263.

Bostoen, Koen. 2012 How the ‘Savanna Corridor’ facilitated the Bantu expansion: A lexical approach to pioneer tree species. Paper presented at The impact of a major environmental crisis on species, populations and communities: the fragmentation of African forests at the end of the Holocene, Academie des Sciences, Paris, March 1-2.

Grollemund, Rebecca & Jean-Marie Hombert. 2010. Language Classification and Specialized Lexicons: A Case Study in North-West Bantu. Paper presented at the 40th Colloquium on African Languages and Linguistics, CALL 40, Leiden, August 23-25, 2010.

Grollemund, Rebecca & Jean-Marie Hombert. 2011a. Use of plant names for the classification of the Bantu languages of Gabon. In Bruce Connell & N. Rolle (eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference on African Linguistics. Toronto: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

Grollemund, Rebecca & Jean-Marie Hombert. 2011b. Intricate classification of North West Bantu languages. Paper presented at Bantu 4, Berlin, 7-9 April, 2011.

Grollemund, Rebecca & Jean-Marie Hombert. 2011c. Phylogenetic classification of North Western Bantu languages. Paper presented at the 20th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Osaka, Japan. July 25-30, 2011.

Guthrie, Malcolm. 1967-1971. Comparative Bantu: an introduction to the comparativelinguistics and prehistory of the Bantu language. 4 vols. London: Gregg International Publishers Ltd.

Hombert, Jean-Marie & Rebecca Grollemund. 2012. Phylogenetic classification of Grassfields languages. In Jeff Good & G. Buckley. (eds.). Stanford, California: CSLI Publications.

Hombert, Jean-Marie. 2012. Role of agriculture in population movements in the African Equatorial forest. Paper presented at The impact of a major environmental crisis on species, populations and communities: the fragmentation of African forests at the end of the Holocene, Academie des Sciences, Paris, March 1-2, 2012.

Mougiama-Daouda, Patrick & Jean-Marie Hombert. 2011. Denomination and reconstruction of mammals in Bantu languages. Paper presented at Bantu 4, Berlin, 7-9 April, 2011.

Nurse, Derek & Gérard Philippson. 2003. Towards a historical classification of the Bantu languages. In Derek Nurse & Gérard Philippson (eds.), The Bantu languages, 164-181. London-New-York: Routledge.

Oslisly, Richard. 2012. Climatic changes and cultural changes in the Cameroon-Gabon forest area during the last 4000 years. Paper presented at The impact of a major environmental crisis on species, populations and communities: the fragmentation of African forests at the end of the Holocene, Academie des Sciences, Paris, March 1-2, 2012.

Patin, Etienne, Guillaume Laval, Luis B. Barreiro, Antonio Salas, Ornella Semino, Silvana Santachiara-Benerecetti, Kenneth K. Kidd, Judith R. Kidd, Antoine Gessain, Lolke Van der Veen, Jean-Marie Hombert, Alain Froment, Evelyne Heyer & Lluis Quintana-Murci. 2009. Origins and population dynamics of African farmers and Pygmy hunter-gatherers inferred from a multilocus resequensing dataset. PLoS Genetics 5.

Quintana-Murci, Lluis, Hélène Quach, Christine Harmant, Francesca Luca, Blandine Massonnet, Etienne Patin, Lucas Sica, Patrick Mougiama-Daouda, David Comas, Shay Tzur, & others. 2008. Maternal traces of deep common ancestry and asymmetric gene flow between Pygmy hunter-gatherers and Bantu-speaking farmers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105(5). 1596-1601.

Vansina, Jan. 1995. New linguistic evidence and ‘the Bantu expansion’. The Journal of African History 36(2). 173-195.

Verdu, Paul, Frederic Austerlitz, Arnaud Estoup, Renaud Vitalis, Myriam Georges, Sylvain Théry, Alain Froment, Sylvie Le Bomin, Antoine Gessain, Jean-Marie Hombert, Lolke Van der Veen, Lluis Quintana-Murci, Serge Bahuchet & Evelyne Heyer. 2009. Origins and genetic diversity of pygmy hunter-gatherers from Western Central Africa. Current Biology 19(4). 312-318.