<P> Initially archaeologists believed that they could find archaeological similarities in the ancient cultures of the region that the Bantu - speakers were held to have traversed. The archaeologists failed to find evidence. Linguists, classifying the languages and creating a genealogical table of relationships believed they could reconstruct material culture elements . They believed that the expansion was caused by the development of agriculture, the making of ceramics, and the use of iron, which permitted new ecological zones to be exploited . In 1966 Roland Oliver published an article presenting these correlations as a reasonable hypothesis . </P> <P> The hypothesized Bantu expansion pushed out or assimilated the hunter - forager proto - Khoisan, who had formerly inhabited Southern Africa . In Eastern and Southern Africa, Bantu speakers may have adopted livestock husbandry from other unrelated Cushitic - and Nilotic - speaking peoples they encountered . Herding practices reached the far south several centuries before Bantu - speaking migrants did . Archaeological, linguistic, genetic, and environmental evidence all support the conclusion that the Bantu expansion was a significant human migration but they fail to support expansion from west Africa . </P> <P> The Niger--Congo family comprises a huge group of languages spread throughout Sub-Saharan Africa . The Benue--Congo branch includes the Bantu languages, which are found throughout Central, Southern, and Eastern Africa . </P> <P> A characteristic feature of most Niger--Congo languages, including the Bantu languages, is their use of tone . They generally lack case inflection, but grammatical gender is characteristic, with some languages having two dozen genders (noun classes). The root of the verb tends to remain unchanged, with either particles or auxiliary verbs expressing tenses and moods . For example, in a number of languages the infinitival is the auxiliary designating the future . </P>

What was the result of the bantu migrations