<P> Current scholarly understanding places the ancestral proto - Bantu homeland in West Africa near the present - day southwestern border of Nigeria and Cameroon c. 4,000 years ago ( 2000 B.C. ) , and regards the Bantu languages as a branch of the Niger -- Congo language family . This view represents a resolution of debates in the 1960s over competing theories advanced by Joseph Greenberg and Malcolm Guthrie , in favor of refinements of Greenberg 's theory . Based on wide comparisons including non-Bantu languages , Greenberg argued that Proto - Bantu , the hypothetical ancestor of the Bantu languages , had strong ancestral affinities with a group of languages spoken in Southeastern Nigeria . He proposed that Bantu languages had spread east and south from there , to secondary centers of further dispersion , over hundreds of years . </P>
<P> Current scholarly understanding places the ancestral proto - Bantu homeland in West Africa near the present - day southwestern border of Nigeria and Cameroon c. 4,000 years ago ( 2000 B.C. ) , and regards the Bantu languages as a branch of the Niger -- Congo language family . This view represents a resolution of debates in the 1960s over competing theories advanced by Joseph Greenberg and Malcolm Guthrie , in favor of refinements of Greenberg 's theory . Based on wide comparisons including non-Bantu languages , Greenberg argued that Proto - Bantu , the hypothetical ancestor of the Bantu languages , had strong ancestral affinities with a group of languages spoken in Southeastern Nigeria . He proposed that Bantu languages had spread east and south from there , to secondary centers of further dispersion , over hundreds of years . </P>
in what area of africa did the early bantu originate
in what area of africa did the early bantu originate
West Africa near the present - day southwestern border of Nigeria and Cameroon
West Africa near the present - day southwestern border of Nigeria and Cameroon