3000–1000 BCE: (The Ubangian Expansion — A Second Major Spread of the Agricultural Frontier in Africa Largely Unrecognized by Historians, Peoples Speaking La…

3000–1000 BCE: (The Ubangian Expansion — A Second Major Spread of the Agricultural Frontier in Africa Largely Unrecognized by Historians, Peoples Speaking Languages of the Ubangian Subgroup of the North Voltaic Branch of Niger-Congo Spreading Through the Lands Immediately North of the Bantu Regions Between 3000 and 1000 BCE, Establishing Themselves Across Most of the Vast Basin of the Ubangi River in Today’s Central African Republic and the Far Northern Parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo with Easternmost Settlements Overlapping into Western South Sudan, Bringing a Mixture of African Crops with Yams Most Important in the Wetter South and Sorghum in the Drier North): A second major spread of the agricultural frontier, largely unrecognized by historians, also took place in Africa over the last three millennia BCE. Between around 3000 and 1000 BCE, peoples speaking languages of the Ubangian subgroup of the North Voltaic branch of the Niger-Congo language family spread through the lands immediately north of the Bantu regions of expansion. They established themselves across most of the vast basin of the Ubangi River of today’s Central African Republic and the far northern parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, with their easternmost settlements overlapping into western South Sudan by the first millennium BCE. The Ubangian peoples brought with them a mixture of African crops, with yams most important in the southern, wetter parts of the Ubangi basin, and with sorghum the more important crop in the drier northern parts of this zone. The Ubangian expansion is the shadow history of the Bantu expansion — a parallel agricultural frontier movement, occurring in the same millennia, carried by a different branch of the same Niger-Congo language family, spreading through the lands immediately to the north. While the Bantu speakers moved south and east, the Ubangian speakers moved east, filling the vast Ubangi basin with agricultural communities that have been almost entirely invisible in the standard historical narrative. The asymmetry of scholarly attention is itself revealing: the Bantu expansion has been the subject of hundreds of studies, while the Ubangian expansion — equally consequential for the demographic and cultural history of central Africa — has been almost entirely overlooked.