Who Were The First Inhabitants Of Angola?

The first inhabitants of Angola were the Khoisan people. This was a tribe whose primary occupations were hunting and gathering. This was a majority community in Angola until a large population of this community was replaced by the Bantu tribe, which started migrating to Angola in large numbers and settling down.

The latter half of the fifteenth century saw the arrival of the first batch of settlers from Europe. These settlers from Portugal arrived in the country now known as Angola in the year 1483 and settled on the banks of the River Congo. At that time, the states of Kongo, Ndongo and Lunda existed. The Kongo State, in fact, stretched from the country we know in the modern day as Gabon, which was its northern extremity, to the River Kwanza in the south. The Portuguese arrived in Angola to participate in the slave trade, but gradually ended up taking control of the coastal part of Angola, fighting a series of wars and signing treaties throughout the 16th century.