Igbos Were The Proto-Bantus

I’m fortunate to have come across a report that shows that the first Bantus(who are now in there many many millions in Central and Southern Africa) originated from Eastern Nigeria, the location of Igboland. This excites but does not surprise me as I wrote in my book some years ago about a group of Igbos that long long ago left Igboland on an Equianoist migration to Southern Africa.

These Igbos promoted civilization by spreading the Igbo concepts of Equianoism and Chi as they spread through Southern Africa, and their influence can be seen in the Tsonga and Lemba ethnic groups. I also revealed that after the journey of these Igbos, their remnants (those who did not fuse into the different cultures they met) settled at a place called Ibo Island today, where the people speak a ‘mysterious language’ called Ibo.

All this information was gotten through painstaking research, and I even had to travel internationally. So since other researchers have traced the Bantus to Eastern Nigeria, and because of the penchant of the Igbos to travel widely, I think that the Igbos I wrote about are the proto-Bantus that the researchers say came from Eastern Nigeria.

Accordinjg to Prinston.edu, “The Bantu languages originated in the region of eastern Nigeria or Cameroon. About 2000 years ago the Bantu people spread southwards and eastwards, introducing agriculture and iron working and colonizing much of the continent in the Bantu expansion.

The technical term Bantu, simply meaning “people”, was first used by Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel Bleek (1827–1875) as this is reflected in many of the languages of this group. A common characteristic of Bantu languages is that they use words such as muntu or mutu for “person”, and the plural prefix for human nouns starting with mu- (class 1) in most languages is ba- (class 2), thus giving bantu for “people”. Bleek, and later Carl Meinhof, pursued extensive studies comparing the grammatical structures of Bantu languages.”

Today the Bantus have mixed with the local populations they found and have promoted civilization. Today the Bantu population is 60 million, in 535 languages.

According to a comment on Wisegeek.org, “The proto-Bantu people originated in what is now south east Nigeria/northern Cameroon [This reminds me of the ancient Kingdom of Biafra that occupied roughly the same space thousands of years ago] and slowly began migrating into central/southern/east Africa around 4000 years ago. The Bantu are of West African descent and typically belong to E2 haplogroups, also common among West African populations.”

Another section posits, “Many of the great kingdoms of South Africa were ruled by Bantus, who tended to be highly resourceful and adaptable. Their culture subsumed those of other native Africans, although traces of earlier African peoples can be seen in some societies today. These kingdoms traded with people from other regions of the world, including the Europeans, and as Europeans started to colonize Africa, they pressured the existing Bantus to move. People who speak the languages in this family can be found in Rwanda, Angola, Burundi, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, among other nations in the southern part of Africa.”

According to @Anon 342530 in the Wisegeek post, “The word ‘ntu’ means person, and the prefix ‘Ba’ is used by class 2 bantu to denote the plural. ‘Bantu’ therefore means ‘people’. The Bantu have migrated and multiplied all over Africa. The presence of the word ‘ntu’ or ‘ndu’ in reference to a person is given as clue, in a modern language, that they are Bantu.” In Igbo the word ‘ndu’ means life and ‘ndi’ means people, as in ‘ndi mmadu’ or ‘otutu ndi’.

PS: Another school of thought says that the proto-Bantus originated from the Sudan-Egypt area. That fits in because as we have been saying in this blog, the Igbos have a Judeo-Nubian origin. To understand more of the Igbo influence in the development of modern civilization, contact us for my book on the matter.

What’s your reaction to this story? What do you think of the Igbo tradition of traveling widely? How are the Igbos and African Americans who are mostly Igbo promoting civilization today?