<P> Using a different comparative method focused more exclusively on relationships among Bantu languages, Guthrie argued for a single Central African dispersal point spreading at a roughly equal rate in all directions . Subsequent research on loanwords for adaptations in agriculture and animal husbandry and on the wider Niger--Congo language family rendered that thesis untenable . In the 1990s, Jan Vansina proposed a modification of Greenberg's ideas, in which dispersions from secondary and tertiary centers resembled Guthrie's central node idea, but from a number of regional centers rather than just one, creating linguistic clusters . </P> <P> It is unclear exactly when the spread of Bantu - speakers began from their core area as hypothesized c. 5,000 years ago (3000 B.C.). By 3,500 years ago (1500 B.C.) in the west, Bantu - speaking communities had reached the great Central African rain forest, and by 2,500 years ago (500 B.C.) pioneering groups had emerged into the savannahs to the south, in what are now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, and Zambia . Another stream of migration, moving east, by 3,000 years ago (1000 B.C.) was creating a major new population center near the Great Lakes of East Africa, where a rich environment supported a dense population . Movements by small groups to the southeast from the Great Lakes region were more rapid, with initial settlements widely dispersed near the coast and near rivers, due to comparatively harsh farming conditions in areas farther from water . Pioneering groups had reached modern KwaZulu - Natal in South Africa by A.D. 300 along the coast, and the modern Northern Province (encompassed within the former province of the Transvaal) by A.D. 500 . </P> <P> Before the expansion of farming and herding peoples, including those speaking Bantu languages, Africa south of the equator was populated by neolithic hunting and foraging peoples . Some of them were ancestral to proto - Khoisan - speaking peoples, whose modern hunter - forager and linguistic descendants, the Khoekhoe and San, occupy the arid regions around the Kalahari desert . The Hadza and Sandawe populations in Tanzania comprise the other modern hunter - forager remnant in Africa of these proto - Khoisan - speaking peoples . </P> <P> Over a period of many centuries, most hunting - foraging peoples were displaced and absorbed by incoming Bantu - speaking communities, as well as by Ubangian, Nilotic, and Sudanic language - speakers in North Central and Eastern Africa . The Bantu expansion was a long series of physical migrations, a diffusion of language and knowledge out into and in from neighboring populations, and a creation of new societal groups involving inter-marriage among communities and small groups moving to communities and small groups moving to new areas . </P>

Which modern language family was displaced by the migration of bantu speakers