Africa) assumes totally different
designations in different Bantu tribes. The Bantu, moreover, remained
faithful to a great number of roots like "fowl," which referred to animals,
plants, implements and abstract concepts known to them in their original
home. Thus there are the root-words for ox (_-nombe_, _-ombe_, _-nte_),
goat (_-budi_, _-buzi_, _-buri_), pig (_-guluba_), pigeon (_-jiba_),
buffalo (_nyati_), dog (_mbwa_), hippopotamus (_-bugu_, _gubu_), elephant
(_-jobo_, _-joko_), leopard (_ngwi_), house (_-zo_, _-do_, _-yumba_,
_-anda_, _-dago_, _-dabo_), moon (_-ezi_), sun, sky, or God (_-juba_),
water (_-ndi_, _-ndiba_, _mandiba_), lake or river (_-anza_),[4] drum
(_ngoma_), name (_-ina_ or _jina_), wizard (_nganga_), belly, bowel (_-vu_,
_-vumo_), buttocks (_-tako_); adjectives like _-bi_ (bad), _-eru_ (white);
the numerals, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 and 100; verbs like _fwa_ (to die), _ta_ (to
strike, kill), _la (da)_ or _lia_ (_di_, _dia_) (to eat). The root-words
cited are not a hundredth part of the total number of root-words which are
practically common to all the spoken dialects of Bantu Africa. Therefore
the possession amongst its root-words of a common name for "fowl" seems to
the present writer to show conclusively that (1) the original Bantu tribe
must have possessed the domestic fowl before its dispersal through the
southern half of Africa began, and that (2) as it is historically certain
that the fowl as a domestic bird did not reach Egypt before the Persian
conquest in 525 B.C., and probably would not have been transmitted to the
heart of Africa for another couple of hundred years, the Bantu exodus (at
any rate to the south of the equatorial region) may safely be placed at a
date not much anterior to 2100 years ago.

The creation of the Bantu type of language (pronominal-prefix) was
certainly a much more ancient event than the exodus from the Bantu
mother-land. Some form of speech like Fula, Kiama (Tern), or Kposo of
northern Togoland, or one of the languages of the lower Niger or Benue, may
have been taken up by ancient Libyan, Hamite or Nilotic conquerors and cast
into the type which we now know as Bantu,--a division of sexless Negro
speech, however, that shows no obvious traces of Hamitic (Caucasian)
influence. We have no clue at present to the exact birth-place of the Bantu
nor to the particular group of dialects or languages from which it sprang.
Its origin and near relationships are as much a puzzle as is t