Location: The Bantu people make up about 2/3 of Africa's population, and inhabit the southern half of the continent
Language: The Bantu are a group of people known more as a language group than as a distinct ethnic group. They speak related languages and have similar social characteristics. The Bantu are split into two major language families, the Eastern Bantu and the Western Bantu. The most widely spoken Bantu-derived language is Swahili, which is used by up to 50 million speakers on the eastern coast of Africa. There are two ways in which Bantu languages are different from English, Spanish, French, German, or other European languages. One is that you can stick markers onto a verb to indicate who's doing and receiving the action, so what would take a whole sentence in English only takes a single word in Swahili. The other is all nouns are marked as belonging to one of fifteen to twenty genders.
Most Bantu languages were unwritten. This changed when Europeans arrived. The first Europeans to have contact with the Bantu were usually priests or missionaries, so they were interested in translating the Bible and would write down the local language using whatever spelling conventions their own language used.
History: The Bantu originated in the north western area that they now occupy. Their migration throughout Africa is one of the largest migrations in human history. This migration began in about 1000 BC and continued until the 3rd or 4th century AD. There is continued speculation about why they moved in the first place. One reason may be that overpopulation encouraged some groups to move away in order to practice agriculture. Another could be that they were in search of fertile land. Or, the move may have been due to internal conflicts within their communities or external attacks by their neighbors.
The Bantu introduced many things into the areas they migrated to. They were an agricultural people and introduced crops such as millet and sorghum. They may also have introduced iron smelting and iron tools.
Resources:
http://ling.ucsd.edu/~hubbard/hemphill.txt
http://library.thinkquest.org/16645/the_people/ethnic_bantu.shtml
http://www.uganda.co.ug/Bantu.htm
By, Erica Kromer