Overview
E-Z25383 is a major downstream branch within E-Z3612 and represents a notable demographic pulse in west-central Africa during the later stages of the Bantu expansion. Its timing corresponds with the emergence of more complex regional settlement systems, increased agricultural productivity and intensified movement along river corridors that connected Cameroon, northern Gabon and the western Congo Basin. Linguistic, archaeological and genetic evidence together suggest that E-Z25383 diversified during a period when distinct forest-adapted farming cultures were solidifying across the equatorial belt. Because of this, modern representatives of E-Z25383 often show strong regional clustering that mirrors refined sub-branches of Bantu languages.
Geographic distribution
E-Z25383 is most common in Cameroon’s southern and eastern regions, Gabon’s interior provinces, the Republic of the Congo’s northern departments and parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s western forest margins. More easterly distributions appear in populations of Rwanda and Uganda, typically reflecting later Iron Age movements. The lineage has a small but detectable presence in diaspora communities across the Atlantic, corresponding to the historical movements of the 16th–19th centuries.
Ancient DNA
- While ancient DNA from rainforest regions remains limited, the age estimates and regional clustering of E-Z25383 align closely with archaeological phases referred to as the Early and Classic Iron Age in west-central Africa.
- Ceramic traditions such as the Okala and Ntumu complexes, found in Cameroon and Gabon, overlap chronologically with the expansion period of E-Z25383 and may reflect the same underlying demographic processes.
- Population-genetic models show that the diversification of E-Z25383 coincides with a period of increasing population density in equatorial forest zones, driven by agricultural intensification and iron production.
Phylogeny & subclades
E-Z25383 sits as one of the largest identifiable radiations beneath E-Z3612. Its downstream structure includes several sub-branches tied to specific ecological and cultural spheres: a Cameroon-focused group, a Gabon-Congo corridor cluster, and one or more eastern branches that extend into Great Lakes populations. New sequencing from previously undersampled regions repeatedly adds minor sub-branches, indicating that the tree is far from complete and likely to grow significantly with improved sampling.
- E-Z25383* basal
- Cameroon regional branch
- Gabon–Congo interior forest cluster
- Western DR Congo river corridor branch
- Eastern Great Lakes–linked cluster
Notes & context
Because E-Z25383 reflects a mid-Iron Age population pulse, it provides fine-scale temporal resolution for modelling expansions that occurred after the initial Bantu dispersal. It overlaps closely with linguistic boundaries between several Northwest and West-Savanna Bantu subgroups, suggesting that the lineage could help refine hypotheses about early cultural differentiation inside the rainforest zone. As genomic coverage expands, E-Z25383 is expected to gain many new terminal branches.
References & external links