Istwa Nou

The rivers of the Congo basin carried more than iron. Sheep spread out of the African Great Lakes along the same routes, apparently starting in the first millennium BCE, and the vocabulary records the journey. One line of spread is marked by the word *-meme, which began among Central Sudanic speakers in the far southeast of what is now South Sudan and passed from language to language westward through the Bantu communities along the middle Congo, reaching the Atlantic coast at the river's mouth. A second line shows up in a Great Lakes Bantu word, *-panga, which travelled southwest in the same period from the early Bantu settlers of the lakes to the societies around and below the upper and middle Sankuru. Two words, two roads, two streams of animals. Each is documented independently through historical linguistics, and both follow the same river system that was carrying iron, goods and commercial obligation at the same time. The equatorial forest functioned as a corridor.

What is known about early commerce in the Congo basin rests largely on work by Jan Vansina and Kairn Klieman. The best documented stretch is the past two thousand years, and Klieman argues that the long-distance transport of goods in the region very likely began early in the first millennium BCE. The routes carried more than cargo. Ironworking spread along them from the Western Rift westward and southwestward during the middle and later part of that millennium. Sheep spread out of the African Great Lakes region the same way. One line of that spread can be followed through a single word, the term for sheep handed from language to language, which travelled west from Central Sudanic speakers living in the far southeast of what is now South Sudan. So the rivers moved goods, technique, livestock and vocabulary together across thousands of kilometres of forest, while the West African trade belt was expanding and the Garamantes were rising in the Sahara.