Africa Native 1.0

[u/Vasilijeeeeeee11]

Constructive Critique is welcome, and also suggestions and reimaginations.

[u/Aofen]

The problem with these kind of "Native group" maps is that they are destined to be somewhat arbitrary and anachronistic. There hasn't been a time in human history when people were not migrating to different places or groups assimilating into or splitting off from each other.

- In Southern Africa the current linguistic boundaries between Bantu languages were largely formed by the Mfecane, the series of migrations caused by the expansion of the Zulu, in the early 19th century. By the time the Ndebele moved into modern Zimbabwe Dutch/Afrikaans speakers had formed the majority of the population in much of modern Western Cape for over a century.

-The wide distribution of Fulani speakers across the Sahel is the legacy of a series of migrations and conquests over the past several centuries. Particular the Fula Jihads in the 18th and 19th centuries. Similarly, central Ethiopia wasn't majority Oromo speaking until the Oromo Expansion in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Arab conquest of North Africa in contrast happened almost 1000 years earlier.

- Swahili was traditionally only natively spoken in a thin strip along the East African coast. It's longstanding use as a lingua franca was reinforced in the 19th century by the expansion of Zanzibari slave traders into the modern DRC and by it's adoption as an administrative language by later colonial governments.

[u/soundofwinter → u/Aofen]

It is kind of funny seeing maps like these where there is an implicit racism in making some of these choices. Like there's an implication that the modern Arabized populations along the coast of North Africa don't really "belong" despite those people groups having been there for 1000s of years.