Bantu

Between about 4000 BC and AD 500 Bantu farming communities spread south in two streams, one reaching central Angola along the coast and Congo rivers, the other east to Lake Victoria. They absorbed or displaced the foragers they met, among them Pygmy and Khoisan peoples.

By 1337 several large states had arisen from this spread. Great Zimbabwe, the biggest stone city of southern Africa, was a capital from the thirteenth century, Kilwa's sultans held sway along the Swahili coast, and from about 1390 the Kingdom of Kongo ruled the lower Congo.