section_path: History/4th millenium BC – 6th century AD/Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa
section_name: Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa
paragraph_text: Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa
  
  In Central Africa the Sao Civilisation flourished for over a millennium beginning in the 6th century BC. The Sao lived by the Chari River south of Lake Chad in territory that later became part of present-day Cameroon and Chad. Sao artifacts show that they were skilled workers in bronze, copper, and iron, with finds including bronze sculptures, terracotta statues of human and animal figures, coins, funerary urns, household utensils, jewellery, highly decorated pottery, and spears. Nearby, around Lake Ejagham in south-west Cameroon, the Ekoi Civilisation rose circa 2nd century AD, and are most notable for constructing the Ikom monoliths. Further east, the northern part of the Swahili coast was home to the elusive Azania, most likely a Southern Cushitic polity.
  
  The Bantu expansion constituted a major series of migrations of Bantu peoples from central Africa to eastern and southern Africa and was substantial in the settling of the continent. Commencing in the 2nd millennium BC, the Bantu began to migrate from Cameroon to central, eastern, and southern Africa, laying the foundations for future states such as the Kingdom of Kongo in the Congo Basin, the Empire of Kitara in the African Great Lakes, the Luba Empire in the Upemba Depression, the Kilwa Sultanate in the Swahili coast by crowding out Azania, with Rhapta being its last stronghold by the 1st century AD, and forming various city states constituting the Swahili civilisation. These migrations also prefaced the Kingdom of Mapungubwe in the Zambezi basin. After reaching the Zambezi, the Bantu continued southward, with eastern groups continuing to modern-day Mozambique and reaching Maputo in the 2nd century AD. Further to the south, settlements of Bantu peoples who were iron-using agriculturists and herdsmen were well established south of the Limpopo River by the 4th century AD, displacing and absorbing the original Khoisan. To their west in the Tsodilo hills of Botswana there were the San, a semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer people who are thought to have descended from the first inhabitants of Southern Africa 100,000 years BP, making them one of the oldest cultures on Earth.