Genetics and Demographic History of the <scp>B</scp> antu

Abstract Peoples speaking languages of the Bantu family are widespread in sub‐Saharan Africa, from the equatorial rainforest to the Cape of Good Hope. Their present‐day distribution is the result of a remarkable expansion, which started about 4000–5000 years ago in the borderland between Cameroon and Nigeria. The genetic distances among Bantu‐speaking populations are significantly lower than those between the Bantu and other ethnolinguistic groups from Africa, suggesting an actual movement of people, rather than cultural diffusion. However, this genetic homogeneity places a challenge to the reconstruction of their actual routes of dispersal, with existing hypotheses being mainly based on data from linguistics and archaeology. While the indigenous populations they encountered did not provide a major contribution to the Bantu gene pool at large, admixture studies reveal different patterns of social interaction, which range from Bantu dominance in the rainforest to a more levelled exchange in southern Africa. Key Concepts Most speakers of modern‐day Bantu languages share a distinctive genetic component. The spread of the Bantu languages corresponds to a migratory movement, rather than to cultural diffusion. The Bantu migrations correlate with the appearance of technological innovations and new subsistence strategies in western Central Africa. The range of sampled populations and the resolution of the genetic analyses need to be increased to further explore the genetic relationships among different Bantu groups and infer the dispersal models that best explain them. The best documented cases of admixture between Bantu and non‐Bantu populations are provided by studies that were undertaken in the Central African rainforest and the southern African Kalahari basin.