What Can a Multi-agent System Tell Us About the Bantu Expansion 3,000 Years Ago?

Abstract

The Bantu expansion toward Southern and Eastern Africa is a complex and long-term phenomenon. Migrations occurred along different paths, often likely to bypass the rainforest, which was not suitable for Bantu’s farming. At the same time, diverse groups of forest foragers lived in the forest. It is established that Bantu and forest foragers came to meet, but how they interacted and how it impacted the Bantu migrations remain open questions.

The authors’ aim is to use a MAS model in order to explore the impact of interactions with forest foragers on the Bantu expansion. The development of such a model requires discussions between specialists of the thematic question and modelers. This chapter details the main questions which arise when integrating into a MAS the specialists’ hypotheses regarding socio-anthropological factors while remaining generic enough to account for a period of a few thousand years.