Friday, January 1, 6500

Bantu Migration to Angola (c. 500 BC) - Log Drum


Angola, is a country in south-central Africa bordering Namibia to the south, Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, and Zambia to the east, and with a west coast along the Atlantic Ocean. The exclave province Cabinda has a border with the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Khoisan hunter-gatherers are some of the earliest known modern human inhabitants of the area. They were largely replaced by Bantu tribes during Bantu migrations, though small numbers of Khoisan remain in parts of southern Angola to the present day.

The Bantu expansion was a millennia-long series of migrations of the original proto-Bantu language group. This group is hypothesized to have originated from the southwestern border of modern Nigeria and Cameroon around 3000 BC. A diffusion of language and knowledge spread among neighboring populations, and a creation of new societal groups involving inter-marriage spread to new areas and communities.

Bantu-speakers developed novel methods of agriculture and metalworking which allowed people to colonize new areas with widely varying ecologies in greater densities than hunting and foraging permitted. They pushed out the hunter-forager Khoisan, who formerly inhabited these areas. Meanwhile in Eastern and Southern Africa, Bantu-speakers adopted livestock husbandry from other peoples they encountered, and in turn passed it to hunter-foragers. Herding practices reached the far south several centuries before Bantu-speaking migrants did. Archaeological, linguistic and genetic evidence all support the conclusion that the Bantu expansion was one of the most significant human migrations and cultural transformations within the past few thousand years.

It is unclear when exactly the spread of Bantu-speakers began from their core area as hypothesized ca. 3000 BC. By 1500 B.C. in the west, Bantu-speaking communities had reached the great Central African rainforest, and by 2500 years ago (500 B.C.) pioneering groups had emerged into the savannahs to the south, in what are now the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and Zambia.


Angola - Lament of the Deer's Mother (Thumb Piano)










Song (Vocal Call-and-Response, Drums, Log Drums)









A log drum is a hollow idiophone (solid-body percussiont), usually of wood, which is made more resonant through one or more cuts in the instrument.

The resonating chamber increases the volume of the sound produced through the open port.

[6503 Sophocles / 6500 Angola]