BantuFirst at the 2024 World Neolithic Congress in Şanlıurfa

From November 4 to 8 the 2024 World Neolithic Congress in Şanlıurfa (Türkiye) united specialists from around the world to discuss diverse Neolithic formations that took place across different geographical locations in different time-frames following diverse cultural and socio-economic trajectories. BantUGent was also present. Koen Bostoen was invited to talk on the Bantu Expansion in a panel titled “Foraging to Food Production and The Consequences: A Global Review” organized by Peter Bellwood and Hsiao-Chun Hung. He presented a joint talk with Peter Coutros & Jessamy Doman on the “The Bantu Expansion and low-level food production in Central Africa“, which combined a review of existent research with recent insights from the BantuFirst project in the Kwilu-Kasai area of the DRC.

BantuFirst at “The Language of Extreme Events” Conference in Jena

Koen Bostoen (BantUGent), Peter Coutros (BantUGent), Jessamy Doman (BantUGent), Cesar Fortes-Lima (Johns Hopkins University), Sara Pacchiarotti (BantUGent) and Carina Schlebusch (Uppsala University) presented BantuFirst research on “Climate change, population collapse and early settlement of Bantu speakers south of the Congo Forest” at the “The Language of Extreme Events” conference at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena (April 22-23, 2024). The entire program is available here. The book of abstracts can be consulted here.

Conference: The language of Extreme Events

BantuFirst contributes to geography, inventory, and description of Teke languages in DRC and Congo

As the outcome of fieldwork done as part of the BantuFirst project, Guy Kouarata, Sara Pacchiarotti and Koen Bostoen have a new French paper out on the geography, inventory and description of the Teke languages in DRC and Congo. It includes new lexical data collected during survey missions in “Teke-speaking” areas from April 8 to June 15, 2021 and from June 29 to August 15, 2022. These surveys aimed at a better mapping of the geographical distribution of Teke varieties, especially in the DRC. The new lexical data, one list containing 650 lexical correspondences in 11 Teke varieties that are little or not at all described (https://osf.io/gn6ka), and another of about 370 correspondences in 12 other varieties (https://osf.io/vdfxt) are available in open access on the Open Science Framework. The article has just been published in the journal Linguistique et langues africaines: https://journals.openedition.org/lla/12921.

Belgian Knack magazine covers BantuFirst research

Op 7 februari 2024 rapporteert het Nederlandstalig Belgisch tijdschrift Knack in zijn rubriek “Planeet Draulans” over de Nature paper met betrekking tot de verspreiding van de Bantoetalen waaraan het BantuFirst-team bijdroeg.

Popular science magazine EOS reports on BantuFirst research

Het Nederlandstalig populariserend wetenschappelijk tijdschrift EOS Wetenschap rapporteert online over BantuFirst-onderzoek met betrekking tot de verspreiding van de Bantoetalen.

De taal kruipt waar ze niet gaan kan, toont de verspreiding van Bantoe in Afrika

Genetisch onderzoek toont voor het eerst welke migratieroutes West-Afrikaanse Bantoesprekers duizenden jaren geleden namen. De reizigers lieten zich allerminst afschrikken door hoogvlaktes, regenwouden of woestijnen. De bevindingen kunnen ook onderzoek naar gezondheidsproblemen in Congo bevorderen.

Met zo’n vijfhonderd talen en meer dan 350 miljoen sprekers is Bantoe de grootste taalfamilie van Afrika. De verspreiding begon zes- tot vierduizend jaar geleden vanuit West-Afrika, en geldt als een van de belangrijkste demografische gebeurtenissen op het hele continent. Het culturele en biologische landschap is sindsdien drastisch veranderd.

In een nieuwe paper, die zopas verschenen is in het wetenschappelijke tijdschrift Nature, lichten onderzoekers toe hoe die verspreiding precies is gebeurd. Het team van wetenschappers – een interdisciplinaire groep van taalkundigen, genetici en biologen – achterhaalde dat de Bantoesprekers naar het oosten maar ook naar het zuiden van het continent trokken.

Regenwouden en savannes

Vooral die zuidwaartse trek is vrij uitzonderlijk. Meestal vestigen migrerende gemeenschappen zich in regio’s met een vergelijkbaar klimaat en milieu. Meerdere groepen Bantoesprekers uit West-Afrika deden dat niet: ze doorkruisten hoogland in Kameroen, regenwouden in Centraal-Afrika en savannes in het zuidwesten van het continent.

De onderzoekers stelden ook vast dat de Bantoegemeenschappen zich niet in één keer massaal verspreidden, maar dat de migratie veeleer in golven verliep. Het huidige Zambia en de Democratische Republiek Congo waren daarbij cruciaal: verschillende migratieroutes kwamen daar samen.

Het onderzoeksteam baseerde zich voor zijn bevindingen op genetische data van 1.763 individuen, waaronder 1.526 Bantoesprekers uit 147 verschillende talengemeenschappen in veertien Afrikaanse landen. Het analyseerde ook oud-DNA van twaalf individuen uit de late IJzertijd. Die gegevens werden verzameld door een groep van Gentse en Congolese onderzoekers.

Intensieve contacten

De onderzoekers ontdekten daarbij ook dat de migranten uit West-Afrika intensieve contacten aangingen met anderstalige bevolkingsgroepen die al in die regio’s leefden, zoals jagers-verzamelaars in het regenwoud van Congo en de Kalahariwoestijn. Tot die bevindingen waren de onderzoekers niet gekomen als ze uitsluitend naar taalgegevens hadden gekeken, stellen ze.

De genetische dataset waarop de studie is gebaseerd, kan in de toekomst een ander doel dienen, zegt klinisch bioloog Joris Delanghe (UGent), die meewerkte aan de studie. ‘Ze zal ook een voorname rol spelen in onderzoek naar gezondheidsproblemen waarmee verschillende regio’s in Congo geconfronteerd worden.’

Tot de Bantoetalen behoren onder meer het Lingala, Kiswahili en Kikongo. Die worden vandaag ook in België en elders in Europa veel gesproken.

Bron: Koen Bostoen, Universiteit Gent

Beeld: Peter Coutros, Universiteit Gent

BantuFirst contributes to new Nature paper on the Bantu Expansion

In a new interdisciplinary study published in Nature, an international group of scientists confirms that the spread of the Bantu language family, which started in West Africa about 5,000 years ago, was mainly driven by human migration. Migrating Bantu speakers spread their languages and new ways of life throughout central, eastern and southern Africa. In the process, they established intensive contacts with populations speaking other languages who already lived in those regions, such as hunter-gatherers in the Congo rainforest and the Kalahari Desert. Most contemporary Bantu speakers have distant ancestors originating from West Africa, while a minority are descended from local populations. The expansion of Bantu languages and their speakers dramatically transformed the linguistic, cultural and biological landscape of Africa.

This new study is based primarily on modern genetic data from 1763 individuals, including 1526 Bantu speakers from 147 different language communities in 14 different African countries, as well as ancient genetic data (aDNA) from 12 individuals from the Late Iron Age. More than one-third of the new data comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), previously underrepresented in evolutionary genetic studies. Together with their Congolese partners, the Ghent research teams of Prof. Koen Bostoen (BantUGent, Department of Languages and Cultures, Faculty of Arts and Philosophy) and Prof. Joris Delanghe (Department of Diagnostic Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences) collected modern genetic data. These genetic data were analyzed at the University of Uppsala (Sweden) under the direction of Prof. Carina Schlebusch.

The full study can be consulted at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06770-6

press release Nature Bantu UGent

communiqué de presse Nature Bantu UGent

persbericht Nature Bantu UGent

Former BantuFirst team member Sara Pacchiarotti wins an ERC starting grant

The European Research Council (ERC) awarded 400 young researchers with a prestigious Starting Grant, including five researchers at Ghent University. One of them is our former BantuFirst team member Sara Pacchiarotti to do the groundbreaking research proposed in her CONGUBANGI project whose summary is below. Her team will work on the other side of the Congo rainforest.

Vijf ERC starting grants (large view)

The Congo-Ubangi watershed in the northern margins of the Congo rainforest is home to a complex mosaic of genealogically and structurally diverse languages spoken by small-size communities with different material cultures and subsistence specializations. Straddling the borders of three modern countries in Central Africa, i.e., Congo-Kinshasa, Congo-Brazzaville, and the Central African Republic, it is a major hotbed of linguistic, cultural, and genetic diversity with a deep history of human occupation. Despite the myriad of insights it could generate about language evolution and deep human past, it is poorly known due to difficulty of access and an astonishingly intricate configuration. CONGUBANGI will realize a breakthrough in our understanding of how linguistic diversity correlates with cultural and genetic diversity and why it originated and persisted in this specific ecoregion for millennia through an interdisciplinary approach involving linguistics, archaeology, and genetics. Understanding the genesis of a central area in the continent where mankind originated represents a unique opportunity to learn about our shared human history of evolution, migration, and diversification, and their impact on human language, a faculty unique among all forms of animal communication. Beyond research, CONGUBANGI will replicate world-wide efforts to preserve local linguistic diversity in a region where it is threatened to extinction by multiple uniformizing pressures, so that it can be made permanently available for posterity.

BantuFirst at the 26th International Conference on Historical Linguistics in Heidelberg

The BantuFirst team gave two talks at the jubilee 26th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, 50 years after the first ICHL conference, which was held from 4 to 8 September 2023 at the University of Heidelberg.

The first one was part of the workshop “Interactions at the dawn of history: Methods and results in prehistoric contact linguistics” organized by Rasmus G. Bjørn (Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, Jena) and Marwan Kilani (University of Basel – Swiss National Science Foundation), the second part of a general session on “Reconstruction and periodization”.

1. “Pre-Bantu substrate in Batwa Bantu languages of the Congo rainforest: A comparative study of nasal-oral stop cluster reduction” by Koen Bostoen, Jean-Pierre Donzo, Guy Kouarata, Lorenzo Maselli, & Sara Pacchiarotti;

2. “Uncovering lost paths in the Congo rainforest: A new, comprehensive phylogeny of West-Coastal and Central-Western Bantu” by Sara Pacchiarotti, Natalia Chousou-Polydouri, Jean-Pierre Donzo, Guy Kouarata, Lorenzo Maselli & Koen Bostoen.

Due to a technical issue causing delay in generating of phylogeny of West-Coastal and Central-Western Bantu, the second talk was eventually replaced last minute by the following talk:

3. “Word-final reduction of Proto-Bantu *ng as a diagnostic feature for successive divergence and convergence in West-Coastal Bantu” by Sara Pacchiarotti, Guy Kouarata & Koen Bostoen.

Jean-Pierre Donzo did BantuFirst fieldwork amongst Batwa communities in Kasai province (DRC)

From August 8 until September 2, 2023, Prof. Jean-Pierre Donzo (ISP-Gombe, Kinshasa & BantUGent) carried out a BantuFirst fieldwork mission amongst several Batwa or Pygmy communities in DRC’s Kasai Province, more specifically around the towns of Mweka and Dekese. He has inventorized and mapped the different Batwa languages in that part of the DRC as well as the Bantu languages of the communities with which they interact. He has collected audo recordings of basic lexical and grammatical data in those Bantu languages.

Guy Kouarata did linguistic and genetic fieldwork in Congo-Brazzaville and Congo-Kinshasa

From July 05 to August 14, 2023, Guy Noel Kouarata conducted linguistic and genetic fieldwork in Congo-Brazzaville and Congo-Kinshasa. The objectives of his mission were to:

Obtain authorization for linguistic and genetic research in Congo-Brazzaville;
Gather linguistic data in languages with little or no description, especially Bantu languages spoken by indigenous forager communities;
Gather extra data for an ongoing comparative study on nasal-consonant clusters in Bantu languages of Guthrie’s zones A, B, C and H;
Gather genetic data in indigenous Bantu-speaking forager communities for analysis by Carina Schlebusch’s lab at Uppsala University.

At the end of his mission, Guy managed to collect linguistic data in 25 different language communities: Ibongo from Sibiti, Teke from Zanage, Ibwisi from Loubetsi, Tsayi from Lioueme, Ndasa from Bambama, Mikaya from Peke, Bambenzele from Mokouanzo, Pomo from Kabo, Bomwali from Mabelou, Lino from Kabo, Ngombé (Ligbaka) from Sembe, Itswa from Ngo, Mosien from Moseno, Likouala from Mossaka, Likouba from Loboko, Doondo from Loutete, Bongili from Pikounda, Njem from Souanke, Mboko from Mbomo, Moyi from Makotipoko, Fumu from Kintele, Kukuya from Djambala, Ibali from Mpila, Nzikini from Ossele and Bomitaba from Epena.

He furthermore obtained 59 saliva samples for genetic analysis amongst the Mikaya, Ngombé, Babongo, Atswa and Bambenzele communities.

Negotiations with the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research fruitfully resulted in a one-year authorization for linguistic and genetic research in the Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville).