Question

• Describe and explain 5 ways the Bantu migration affected Swahili culture. Your presentation on prompt 1 should continue on prompt 2 with the following information included:
• what the term Bantu migration refers to?
• how was the Bantu migration linked with Swahili culture?
• what benefits did the migration have for the Swahili creativity, arts and the region?

YOUR ANSWER SHOULD NOT BE LESS THAN 350 - 400 WORDS.

Answer 1

PROMPT 1

The Bantu migration affected Swahili in many ways

-Bantu migrants introduced many new skills into the communities they interacted with, including sophisticated farming and industry. These skills included growing crops and forging tools and weapons from metal and slowly they competeted with others and swahili had a bussiness loss.

-Swahili got isolated by other traders.

-Swahili had economical loss.

-Cultural absorption by Bantu caused cultural loss of Swahili.

-Swahili had quarrel with other places and loss of people during war.

-Trading collapse of Swahili.

PROMPT 2

Bantu refers to a large group of linguistic complex in Africa.There are 4 Bantu languages and one amoung it is Swahili .Swahili language is a Bantu branch of language which belongs to Niger-Congo family and are mostly spoken by Swahili people located at the Swahili coast,they speak Swahili as their native language.

Bantu speaking groups were first seen around the Benue-Cross rivers area in southern east Nigeria and migrate over Africa including West Aftica to Central Africa across much of sub saharan Africa to Zambia area.The primary evidence of expansion of Bantu was the language spoken in Sub - Equatorial Africa which were remarkably similar to each other many other evidences have bot been conclusive and mang aspects still remains under doubt and no other archaeological and genetic evidence are found.

The Bantu migration began about 3000 years ago in which one stream going into East Africa ,and other streams going South along the African coast of Gabon etc .. they started sprading to each places around Africa .They also increased their productivity in cultivation and increased the supply to other places to increase the knowledge regarding them to others.

There are lot many reasons for the Bantu migration which include

-Drying up of Sahara grasslands which caused the cultivating group of Bantu people to migrate to a new fertile land.

-To expand their iron working culture in which they made iron tools that aided in transforming their agricultural fields more efficient and easy to work.

-To run away from powerful ones for safety.

-Overpopulation

-increased competition for local resources

Swahili culture is the culture followed by Swahili speaking group which belongs to a Bantu language .As with the Swahili language, Swahili culture also has a Bantu core.The Swahili people are mainly united under the mother tongue of Kiswahili, a Bantu language. They also extends to Arab, Persian, and other migrants who reached the coast around the 7th and 8th centuries, by enganging in Indian ocean trade and they were well know to Arabic,Indian,Perians ,Chinese etc...

During the 10th century, several city-states flourished along the Swahili Coast and adjacent islands, including Kilwa, Malindi, Gedi, Pate, Comoros, and Zanzibar because the Swahili people served them and helped them and was a facilitator for local Arab,Malasyian,Indian,Chinese and Indonesian merchants.They all strated competition with one another to improve their trade .There main trade and exports was salt,ebony, gold, ivory, and sandalwood.These early Swahili city-states contained Muslim, and they were politically independent of one another.
Slowly by the 16th century all these places start denying the trade from Swahili mainly as a consequence of the Portuguese advent.Slowly the Swahili trading centers experienced a great loss and were out of bussiness , and the connection of other places between Africa and Asia on the Indian Ocean collapsed.

Swahili coast is the great example for Swahili arts.The influence of multiculture have made a great change in arts of Swahili including furnitures and architecture .The Swahili usually doesnot use designs of living objects as they are of Muslim background.They also sing a melody of Arabic mix which is known as taarab which is most special about Swahili culture.Swahili Coast belonged to wealthy merchants and landowners, who played a key role in the mercantile economy of the region.

Swahili had lot many advantages too by bantu expansion

-Introdution of new agricultural crops.

-Evolution of iron and iron equipment which helped lot in agricultural fields.

-They introduced centralised government system where king acted as overall ruler.

-Introduced system of buliding permanent house.

-Increased trades and large area of tribes.

-The knowledge of iron smelting led to the making of bows, arrows and spears for defense and protection.