The Bantu people.

The Bantu expansion

The Bantu are thought to have originated from the the area of Nigeria/Cameroon, and started their expansion East and South about 5,000 years ago (3,000 BC). They reached the equatorial rain forest 3500 years ago, entering what is now Uganda, 3000 years ago. It is people of this ancestry that comprised the bulk of the slaves transported across the Atlantic, and most black Americans can trace their ancestry to West and West-central Africa.

Bantu farming

The success of the Bantu was to do with farming. In a pattern repeated the world over throughout history, the farming people expand relatively quickly into lands occupied by hunter gatherers, displacing them, and  absorbing a small number of them into their population.  Prior to 3000 BC the population of sub Saharan Africa looked like the Khoisan people. The Bantu underwent a recent, massive, population explosion and are now numerically superior. If you went back in…