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by Nicholas Mwitelela Katanekwa (Author)
In "The prehistory of Zambia's 73+ Bantu Languages of Zambia", Nicholas Katanekwa, illuminates and provides profound insights of 5000 years of Bantu people's past existence over a landscape that is over half of Africa's total area. The book provides the missing link in the story of Bantu people's phenomenal colonization of such vast territory, in the dating provided, the segmentation of the Bantu language phylum and migration routes elaborated. The book gives a clear identity of the Bantu people of Zambia and indeed Africa and their major achievements over time including a world record for the grand and phenomenal migration of any language phylum in the whole world.Contrary to prevalent presumptions, Katanekwa argues, the Bantu languages and their speakers comprise three separate segments, though related originally, that took different routes, as a matter of choice out of their original homeland on the north-eastern Nigeria/south western Cameroon border, all the way into Eastern, Southern, South- western and Southern Africa and that along the way divergences into the present language families took place.He demonstrates that what really separates the Bantu Languages family into three groups are their choice of; environment to settle, decorative symbolism, matrilineality or patrilineality, cattle or goats possession, name for human being "or" person and their linguistic divergences over time.The book further reveals that Bantu people have not been isolated actors on their own prehistorical stage, but direct and indirect participants in the major trends of contemporary world prehistory through such feats like the diverse decorative art, innovation of iron smelting, refining, value addition, perfection of copper ore mining, smelting and the dramatic social and political changes like the innovation of governance systems that it engendered, and their contribution to long-distance commercial enterprise through trade.His outline of the prehistory of settlement and development of the Bantu Language Groups of Zambia from 600 B.C to 1600 A.D. is an unprecedented feat worth emulating in the rest of the Bantu Africa for a fuller story of the Bantu language phylum to be fully understood and appreciated.The book changes for good, the Bantu identity, origins, migrations and achievements story.In sketching out this important Bantu story, Katanekwa clearly demonstrates how strong and precise the combined archaeological, historical linguists, ethnographical, world views and geographical language location evidence is in piercing together the contours of the past.Nicholas Mwitelela Katanekwa is a heritage conservation and management specialist and an archaeologist specialized in the Iron Age and is the author of ''Zambia's Outstanding Natural, Cultural and Historical Sites; a Heritage Legacy For All", and "Barotseland;the Three Bantu groups (Bantu ba Tatu) Destination,400 B.C- 1600 A.D. A Report Of Archaeological Excavations in South-west Zambia."This book is a bold, even heroic venture; seeking, as I see it, to correct simplified images of Zambia's past through the dissection of different kinds of evidence and present a new history of migration and settlement that fits in with the diversity of Zambia's languages and language groups. I suppose it is as much a history of language groups as such of languages (and of course prehistory).A major commitment and a major achievement! Congratulations.Dr.Robin Derricourt, author "People of the Lakes" and "Man on the Kafue""I greatly enjoyed reading your text, which i greatly admire. Your book is, If i may say so, a most impressive piece of work. I see two books here: one, which would interest a wide international but mainly academic readership, settling out a new archaeological and linguistic synthesis of the Iron Age in Bantu-speaking Africa, and the other presenting these conclusions to a primarily Zambian audience". Dr.D.W.Phillipson, author of several archaeological books.
