East-Central Africa presents a multifaceted history of change in gendered social and economic roles over the long periods from the late first millennium BCE to the nineteenth century CE. The Bemba proverb that is used as the title of this concluding chapter expressively evokes the depth of the matrifocality of social history in the region, above all among the Sabi peoples. Gender shaped history in East-Central Africa in many long-term ways. The questions this history raises relate to the theories and discoveries of other scholars working on early human history and offer new perspectives on ways to grapple with the issues involved. This short closing chapter considers some of the implications of this history for the study of gender roles and transformations more broadly in Africa and elsewhere.

Implications for the Wider Study of Precolonial Bantu Societies

The cultural traditions and social practices of East-Central African history appear to have extensively preserved older Bantu concepts and practices. The overall strongly matrifocal orientation of the Sabi and, to a lesser extent, of the Botatwe societies may have been the broader social-historical reflection of this conservatism. Conversely, it is possible to interpret the new developments in gendered features of culture among the proto-Sabi and proto-Botatwe in the First Age of Farming as heightening matrifocality and significantly shifting the balances between the female and male spheres of power. Recently a growing body of penetrating studies of early Bantu history has become available, for the first time building a body of resources for macro research on the longue durée of Bantu social history and for the clarification of many points.