Welcome Back - Jared Diamond! The Bantu Peoples of Africa

Welcome back "The Beard!" 
Jared Diamond returns to class during block day this week.

You can't keep a good beard down!

We'll watch a portion of this from Guns, Germs and Steel in class on block day:

About 5,000 years ago, these Bantu farmers began to spread beyond their native north-west region, moving into new lands, picking up crops and animals as they went. Eventually, Bantu culture spread across most of tropical Africa, reaching as far as the Zulu territories of the south.

Physical evidence for this vast tropical diaspora is scant, but archaeologists have found clues at a site on the banks of the Limpopo known as Mapungubwe – the place of the jackal. Here there is evidence for a complex, agricultural state supporting thousands of people throughout southern Africa – farming sorghum and cattle, forging iron, exporting gold and tin and importing exotic materials and precious stones from as far away as India and China.

The discovery of Mapungubwe overturned centuries of prejudice about African history and proved the continent played host to a sophisticated tropical civilization centuries before the arrival of Europeans.

Check out both of the video clip on YouTube below:

Bantu Trading Network