<P> The hypothesized Bantu expansion pushed out or assimilated the hunter - forager proto - Khoisan, who 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 . </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> <P> A typical trait in the Niger - Kordofanian family as a group is the division of nouns . This has been juxtaposed with the gender system of the Indo - European languages . </P>

What was the effect of the bantu migration