According to recent research on areal typology in Africa, Narrow Bantu can be viewed as forming a large macro-area in Africa that is structurally distinct from its areal neighbours like the Macro-Sudan belt, the Chad-Ethiopia area, and the Kalahari Basin (Guldemann forthcoming). At the same time, it is clear that Narrow Bantu is a genealogical off-shoot of its north-western areal neighbour, the Macro-Sudan belt, despite its marked typological deviation from it (Guldemann 2008). This situation informs among other things the historical study of this language group. I argue that early Bantu structure is more likely to have resembled patterns recurrent in the Macro-Sudan belt, which in turn implies that the majority structural profile of Narrow Bantu should not be the yardstick for the reconstruction of early Niger-Congo. Hence, macro-areal typology can and should inform the historical study of genealogical language groups.
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