Bantu is a general term for over 400 different ethnic groups in Africa, from Cameroon to South Africa, united by a common language family (the Bantu languages) and in many cases common customs.

Some historians still accept a synthesis of the above named theories, although the enthusiasm with which the South African apartheid government exploited these ideas left them under something of a cloud.

The Bantu first originated around the Benue-Cross rivers area in southeastern Nigeria and spread over Africa to the Zambia area. Sometime in the second millennium BC, perhaps triggered by the drying of the Sahara and pressure from the migration of people from the Sahara into the region, they were forced to expand into the rainforests of central Africa (phase I). About 1000 years later they began a more rapid second phase of expansion beyond the forests into southern and eastern Africa. Then sometime in the first millennium new agricultural techniques and plants were developed in Zambia, probably imported from South East Asia via Austronesian-speaking Madagascar. With these techniques another Bantu expansion occurred centered on this new location (phase III).

By about AD 1000 it had reached modern day Zimbabwe and South Africa. In Zimbabwe a major southern hemisphere empire was established, with its capital at Great Zimbabwe. It controlled trading routes from South Africa to north of the Zambezi, trading gold, copper, precious stones, animal hides, ivory and metal goods with the Arab traders of the Swahili coast. By the 14th or 15th centuries the Empire had surpassed its resources and had collapsed, with the city of Great Zimbabwe being abandoned.