1000 BCE–1000 CE: (The Continental Spread of African Iron, Mashariki Bantu Expansions Carrying Ironworking Far Across Eastern and Southeastern Africa at the …

1000 BCE–1000 CE: (The Continental Spread of African Iron, Mashariki Bantu Expansions Carrying Ironworking Far Across Eastern and Southeastern Africa at the Close of the First Millennium BCE, a Further Spread Westward from the Great Lakes Region Across Bantu-Speaking Central Africa to the Atlantic via Three Routes: Through the Equatorial Rainforest Along the Middle Congo River, Along the Sankuru River at the Southern Edges of the Rainforest, and Through the Savanna Belt South of the Rainforest, and the Northern Rainforest Spread Meeting a Countervailing Spread South from Cameroon): The subsequent expansions of Mashariki Bantu-speaking communities at the close of the first millennium BCE and the very beginning of the first millennium CE then carried ironworking far across eastern and southeastern Africa. From no later than the middle of the first millennium BCE, iron, iron technology, and the fashioning of iron implements also began a further spread westward from the African Great Lakes region, across Bantu-speaking central Africa, from the Western Rift region all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. The mapping of the extensive body of lexical evidence bearing on this history shows that this technology passed westward from the earliest Mashariki Bantu communities via three main lines of spread toward the Atlantic: through the equatorial rainforest along and north of the middle Congo River; along the Sankuru River region at the southern edges of the rainforest; and through the savanna belt south of the rainforest. The first of these spreads, through the northern parts of the rainforest, met up west of the Ubangi-Congo confluence with a countervailing spread south of iron from Cameroon and the western parts of the Central African Republic. What emerges is a picture of iron technology radiating outward in every direction from a central African origin zone, filling the continent through multiple pathways simultaneously. This is not the tidy, linear diffusion model that textbooks prefer. This is a continental transformation, driven by African peoples moving iron technology through their own networks, their own languages, their own routes of migration and exchange.