Old Stone Age
The earliest inhabitants of the Angola area are believed to have been Khoisan hunter-gatherers whose remains date back to the Old Stone Age.
Based on archaeologial and linguistic evidence, scholars believe that beginning in the last centuries BCE, people speaking languages of the Western Bantu family entered the country and introduced agriculture and iron working. Studies of DNA from Cabinda have found no traces of any population groups other than the Bantu in the modern day population. They expected to find evidence of combined ancestry. This makes it difficult to explain the existence of an earlier population, save that they were completely and rapidly replaced by the Bantu speakers without intermarriage (although intermarriage may have occurred in the central parts of Angola). Also, part of the Khoisan withdrew to what is now Southern Angola as well als Northern Botswana and Northern Namibia, where significant groups are still living.
Read more about this topic: Precolonial History Of Angola
Famous quotes containing the words stone and/or age:
“Fretted shadow on stumps
A vanishing husk
Of light . . . grey lumps
Of stone verge the hills with fears.
It is quickly dusk.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“Not in vain is Ireland pouring itself all over the earth. Divine Providence has a mission for her children to fulfill; though a mission unrecognized by political economists. There is ever a moral balance preserved in the universe, like the vibrations of the pendulum. The Irish, with their glowing hearts and reverent credulity, are needed in this cold age of intellect and skepticism.”
—Lydia M. Child (1802–1880)