Editing Congo River (section)

===Pre-colonial history===
{{Main|Pre-colonial history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo}}{{See also|Category:Ethnic groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo}}
[[File:Mercator Congo map.jpg|thumb|17th-century map of the Congo estuary]]
[[File:Routes of European explorers in Africa, to 1853.jpg|thumb|In this 1853 map of Africa, the remaining ''Unexplored Region'' essentially corresponds to the Congo basin]]

The entire Congo basin is populated by [[Bantu peoples]], divided into several hundred ethnic groups. [[Bantu expansion]] is estimated to have reached the middle Congo by about 500 BC and the upper Congo by the first century AD. Remnants of the aboriginal population displaced by the Bantu migration, [[Pygmy peoples|Pygmies]]/''[[Twa|Abatwa]]'' of the [[Ubangian languages|Ubangian]] phylum, remain in the remote forest areas of the Congo Basin.

By the 13th century there were three main confederations of states in the western Congo Basin. In the east were the [[Seven Kingdoms of Kongo dia Nlaza]], considered to be the oldest and most powerful, which likely included [[Nsundi]], [[Mbata Kingdom|Mbata]], [[Mpangu]], and possibly [[Kundi kingdom|Kundi]] and [[Okanga]]. South of these was [[Mpemba]] which stretched from modern-day [[Angola]] to the Congo River. It included various kingdoms such as [[Mpemba Kasi]] and [[Vunda]]. To its west across the Congo River was a confederation of three small states; [[Vungu]] (its leader), [[Kakongo]], and [[Ngoyo]].<ref>{{Citation |title=The Development of States in West Central Africa to 1540 |date=2020 |work=A History of West Central Africa to 1850 |pages=16–55 |editor-last=Thornton |editor-first=John K. |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/history-of-west-central-africa-to-1850/development-of-states-in-west-central-africa-to-1540/CE71122CF8DFD7B4B188BA34F8F65BFC |access-date=2024-09-21 |series=New Approaches to African History |place=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-107-56593-7}}</ref>{{Rp|pages=24–25}}

The [[Kingdom of Kongo]] was formed in the late 14th century from a merging of the kingdoms of [[Mpemba Kasi]] and [[Mbata Kingdom]] on the left banks of the lower Congo River. Its territorial control along the river remained limited to what corresponds to the modern [[Kongo Central]] province. European exploration of the Congo began in 1482 when Portuguese explorer [[Diogo Cão]] discovered the river estuary{{sfn|Cana|1911|p=917}} (likely in August 1482), which he marked by a [[Padrão]], or stone pillar (still existing, but only in fragments) erected on Shark Point. Cão sailed up the river for a short distance, establishing contact with the Kingdom of Kongo. The full course of the river remained unknown throughout the early modern period.{{efn|The [[Dieppe maps]] of the mid-16th century show the Congo only as a minor river while having the [[Nile]] run throughout the continent, rising in Southern Africa. The same interpretation is in essence still found in Jan Blaeu's ''[[:File:Congo map 1690.jpg|Atlas Maior]]'' of 1660. Jacques Bellin's [[:File:Congo map 1754.jpg|map of the Congo]] in ''Histoire Generale Des Voyages'' by [[Antoine François Prévost]] (1754) shows awareness of the river reaching further inland, to the provinces of ''Sundi'' and ''Pango'', but has no detailed knowledge of its course.}}

The upper Congo basin runs west of the [[Albertine Rift]].{{sfn|Cana|1911|p=917}} Its connection to the Congo was unknown until 1877. The extreme northeast of the Congo basin was reached by the [[Nilotic peoples|Nilotic expansion]] at some point between the 15th and 18th centuries, by the ancestors of the [[Southern Luo language|Southern Luo]] speaking [[Alur people]]. [[Francisco de Lacerda]] followed the Zambezi and reached the uppermost part of the Congo basin (the [[Kazembe]] in the upper Luapula basin) in 1796.

The upper Congo River was first reached by the [[Indian Ocean slave trade|Arab slave trade]] by the 19th century. [[Nyangwe]] was founded as a slavers' outpost around 1860. [[David Livingstone]] was the first European to reach Nyangwe in March 1871.{{sfn|Cana|1911|p=917}} Livingstone proposed to prove that the Lualaba connected to the Nile, but on 15 July, he witnessed a massacre of about 400 Africans by Arab slavers in Nyangwe, which experience left him too horrified and shattered to continue his mission to find the sources of the Nile, so he turned back to Lake Tanganyika.<ref name="Livingstone 1871">{{cite book |last=Livingstone |first=David |title=Livingstone's 1871 Field Diary. A Multispectral Critical Edition |year=2012 |publisher=UCLA Digital Library: Los Angeles, CA |url=http://livingstone.library.ucla.edu/1871diary/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140905100511/http://livingstone.library.ucla.edu/1871diary/ |archive-date=2014-09-05}}></ref><ref name="Jeal 1973">{{cite book |last=Jeal |first=Tim |year=1973 |title=Livingstone |place=New Haven, CT |publisher=Yale University Press |pages=331–335}}</ref>