COUNTRY PROFILE: DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL record suggests that the area now known as the DRC was populated at least 10 000 years ago, and probably earlier, by stone-age pygmy groupings who were forced into the remoter forest areas with the steady incursion of Bantu speakers from present-day Nigeria. By the 7th century AD, these iron-age Bantu communities were well established across large parts of the heavily wooded Congo basin that in turn is dominated by one of the world’s longest and most inaccessible rivers...Read more.