Southern African History Research Articles

Southern African History before 1900: A Select Bibliography of Articles

Southern African History before 1900: A Select Bibliography of Articles

The Sotho, Shona, and Venda: A Study in Cultural Continuity

One of the puzzling problems for the student of southern African history is how to determine the nature and extent of the relationships among African peoples. The difficulty becomes more acute as one probes back in time to the earliest Iron Age, a period in which few research tools are effective. In this study, the early history and possible affinities among the Sotho, Shona, and Venda will be considered with the aid of those types of data, principally archaeological, that seem most applicable to the historical time and problem. For the historian attempting to determine such relationships, cultural rather than genetic data appear to be more valuable. With the limited evidence available, it is presently impossible to ascertain the earliest origins of people and difficult to relate them to one another in terms of common ancestry. To a certain extent, however, broad cultural associations linking separate groups can be defined.

Cattle-Keeping and Milking in Eastern and Southern African History: The Linguistic Evidence

Cattle have been known in northern East Africa for a long time. A single people initiated the spread of cattle farther south through southern East Africa, and partly into southern Africa, at a time prior to the expansion of Bantu-speakers into these regions. This spread was not accompanied by knowledge of milking. The milking of cattle, although very likely practised by some northern East African peoples since a very early period, diffused to Bantu peoples after their advance into eastern and southern Africa was well under way. The practice was probably borrowed from Southern Cushites first by Bantu in northern Tanganyika and through them transmitted to the rest of the eastern and southern Bantu.