500 to 1389

First peoples

Khoisan hunter gatherers have roamed the south of today's Angola for thousands of years. During the first millennium AD, Bantu-speaking farmers who work iron spread into the region from the north, growing crops and later raising cattle. Over the centuries their villages and chiefdoms grow into kingdoms, among them Kongo in the north and, later, Ndongo, whose kings bear the title ngola, the origin of the name Angola.