History of Gabon

Present-day Gabon was first inhabited by rainforest hunter-gatherers, attested as early as c. 43,000 BC; archaeology confirms occupations from the Late Pleistocene to the Neolithic along the coast and in the Ogooue. By c. 400-300 BC, Bantu-speaking farming and ironworking communities settled in the middle Ogooue, initiating an expansion that subsequently structured settlement across the region.