Bantu Migrations: Resources

Here are three good clips about the early Bantu migrations, a New Visions for Public Schools activity about early Africa, and a terrific site about iron in Africa.

One video clip comes from Masaman, who produces a number of educational videos on his YouTube channel.  He does a good job of explaining the groups of people who lived in Africa before the Bantu migrations and the changes the Bantus brought, especially in terms of language.

Khan Academy produced the second clip. The first four minutes of this clip clearly explain the causes and effects of the migrations. The second four minutes review the Polynesian migrations.

The third clip about the Bantus comes from Guns, Germs, and Steel. It runs about six minutes and concentrates on the diversity of Bantu languages.

In addition to the video clips, New Visions for Public Schools has an excellent activity for understanding the African kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai and the influence of Islam on their development.

Finally, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel has a fascinating site about iron in Africa (thanks to Eri Beckman for the link)

It reviews four main points about iron smelting.

• Smelting happened all over the place in many cultures.

• The iron produced was mostly used for everyday items, farming implements, ritual things and for (simple) weapons.

• The level of sophistication was very low and far below of what is needed to produce for example a pattern-welded sword, a wootz blade or a Japanese katana.

• It is very difficult to find examples of early African iron. Almost all pictures found in the Net relate to commercial items, either without a date or 19th / 20th century. Items in museum are often not dated either or from more recent times. Here are examples: