Patrilineal herdsmen and farmers belonging to the large Bantu linguistic group, which is widely spread over central and eastern Africa, moved into southern Africa in distinct waves. They appeared in the region as distinct cultural groups probably between 1000 and 1600 CE. The Sotho (Pedi, Matlala, et al.) and the related Tswana settled on the arid inland plateau where the San were hunting and the Khoi were raising livestock. The Nguni (Zulu, Swazi, and Xhosa) spread out along the southeastern coast. The Lovedu and Venda, two closely related peoples who became strongly amalgamated with the Sotho in the twentieth century, successively broke away from the Karanga in ancient Zimbabwe; the last Venda migration may have crossed the Limpopo River after 1600 CE, but their predecessors were probably among the first inhabitants of the northeastern Transvaal. The Tsonga, or Thonga, migrated in the early nineteenth century into the...