480 
BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 
The tribe speaking this elaborately constructed prefix-language—the Bantu 
mother-tongue—must have waxed very numerous and powerful, have enjoyed 
a certain amount of culture remotely derived from Egypt, and have possessed 
already such domestic animals as the ox, goat, dog, and fowl. Then—and not 
longer ago than two thousand years 1 —the original Bantu people overflowed 
MAP SHOWING THE LINES OF MIGRATION OF THE BANTU TRIBES IN THEIR INVASION 
OF SOUTHERN AFRICA: the dotted lines show migration-routes of Semi-Bantu tribes; the shaded 
circle indicates site where Bantu languages were first developed. 
1 I calculate this date as follows :—Almost all the Bantu peoples have a common word root expressing 
the domestic fowl: Kuku. (Nkuku, Ngoko, Nchuchu, Nsusu, Nguku, Nku.) Now the domestic fowl 
reached Africa first through Egypt at the time of the Persian occupation—not before 400 B.C. To possess 
a name for this bird common to Zululand, the extreme Upper Congo, the Cameroons, and the Victoria 
Nyanza, it is clear that the Bantu knew the fowl prior to their dispersal. As they could not have received 
it from Egypt much more than two thousand years ago, this limits the period which has elapsed since they 
started from their first home to occupy half Africa. I have been working for a good many years at a 
“ Comparative Grammar of the Bantu languages,” which I hope to publish before long. In this I adduce 
many other reasons for fixing the date of the Bantu exodus. 
