Editing Bantu languages (section)

==Origin==
The Bantu languages descend from a common [[Proto-Bantu language]], which is believed to have been spoken in what is now [[Cameroon]] in [[Central Africa]].<ref name="Adler">Philip J. Adler, Randall L. Pouwels, ''World Civilizations: To 1700 Volume 1 of World Civilizations'', (Cengage Learning: 2007), p.169.</ref> An estimated 2,500–3,000 years ago (1000 BC to 500 BC), speakers of the Proto-Bantu language began a series of migrations eastward and southward, carrying agriculture with them. This [[Bantu expansion]] came to dominate Sub-Saharan Africa east of Cameroon, an area where [[Bantu peoples]] now constitute nearly the entire population.<ref name="Adler"/><ref name="Falola">Toyin Falola, Aribidesi Adisa Usman, ''Movements, borders, and identities in Africa'', (University Rochester Press: 2009), p.4.</ref> Some other sources estimate the Bantu Expansion started closer to 3000 BC.<ref name=":6">Gemma Berniell-Lee et al, [http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/7/1581.abstract "Genetic and Demographic Implications of the Bantu Expansion: Insights from Human Paternal Lineages"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110416143255/http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/7/1581.abstract |date=2011-04-16 }}, Oxford Journals</ref>

The technical term Bantu, meaning "human beings" or simply "people", was first used by [[Wilhelm Bleek]] (1827–1875), as the concept is reflected in many of the languages of this group. A common characteristic of Bantu languages is that they use words such as ''muntu'' or ''mutu'' for "human being" or in simplistic terms "person", and the plural prefix for human nouns starting with ''mu-'' (class 1) in most languages is ''ba-'' (class 2), thus giving ''bantu'' for "people". Bleek, and later [[Carl Meinhof]], pursued extensive studies comparing the grammatical structures of Bantu languages.