Several African societies that used certain similar words were called Bantu by the Europeans.

It is believed that the Bantu were from the current area of Cameroon and, in about 1000 B.C., they began to migrate south.

This migration extended through the III and IV centuries A.D. taking the Bantu to concentrate in the south-center of Africa, the current areas of Angola, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Namibia, Zambia, Mozambique, Botswana and Zimbabwe.

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In the new areas occupied by the Bantu, they introduced metallurgy, agriculture and centralized governments. They formed matriarch societies in which the cultivated lands were considered as belonging to the ancestors, the forests were communitarian and the work was individual.

In the first centuries of slave traffic, many people of Bantu groups were enslaved and brought to America. Bantu were the major group of Africans in Bahia, Alagoas, Pernambuco, Maranhão, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro and in many moments reproduced in Brazil their original organization (especially in the 'quilombos'), art and worldview.

'Capoeira', 'congada', the dances and ceremonies called 'cateretê', 'caxambu', 'batuque', 'samba', 'jongo', 'lundu', and 'maracatu' are Bantu heritage.
'Candomblé-de-angola', with which 'capoeira angola' maintains connections, is Bantu expression too.

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