Long time ago, before the arrival of the Portuguese the area that is nowadays known as Angola was still dominated by tribe kingdoms, being the biggest and most powerful one the Kingdom of Kongo, a kingdom with a population of over 30,000 people that stretched from where is now the country of Gabon to where is now the Capital of Angola, Luanda which is located on the Northwest side of the country and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Kwango River occupying the northern region of Angola.
-Banza Kongo, capital of the Kongo Kingdom
These kingdoms were originated by the Bantu, people that traveled a long way from regions around where now is the country of Cameroon to the southern part of the continent and already knew and dominated techniques of agriculture, ceramic and knew how to work with metal and manage it.
The Kongo Kingdom arrived and took control of that area in the 1300s and from that point until the arrival of the Portuguese led by Diogo Cao at Zaire river in 1483 the last rulers or “Mwene Kongo” (that means ruler of Kongo) as they were called were:
-Niaza, during the 1330s
-Nkuwu a Nitinu, just before the arrival of the Portuguese
-Nizinga a Nkuwu, ruler at the time the Portuguese arrived and later was taken to Portugal with some important figures of the kingdom and when returned was baptized, converted to Christianity and became also know as Joao I.
As I mentioned the Rulers where called “Mwene Kongo”, the natives “Bakongo”, their language is “kikongo” and the capital of the kingdom was “Banza Kongo” (located in the north region of Angola). The Bakongo had very developed social and political systems, dominated the iron very well using to make agricultural tools and weapons developing very well the agriculture, raising of animals, ceramic, craft-work and army.
Ivory was very often used as currency but so were some shells and cloth. There were also some kingdoms that were already starting to explore minerals and gems.
I chose to talk about the Kongo Kingdom because it was the first, one of the biggest and maybe more developed but there were other kingdoms in the region that is now Angola, being those the following:
-Ndongo Kingdom
-Matamba Kingdom
-Luanda Empire
-Ngoyo Kingdom
-Kakongo Kingdom
Most of these kingdoms and other ones were highly influenced by the Kongo Kingdom and some of them fought wars against it, examples are the Lunda Empire and the Ndongo Kingdom.
-Some of the Kingdoms that were located in actual Angola
One interesting fact about the Ndongo Kingdom is that the name of one of its rulers “Ngola” is related to the name of the country Angola with some historians believing that that’s because of him that Angola became the name of the country!
These Kingdoms had different religions, depending on the Kingdom, but all of them had indigenous religions based on each Kingdom rulers, history, achievements and beliefs but later they adopted Christianity because of the Portuguese. There isn’t really much information regarding this topic.
There is some information about this topic but not much, and you will find basically the same information in every source that you find on the web. The reason I think you don’t really find a lot of information about such topics is that not a lot of people from other countries (and sometimes even from the country in question) care or is interested in that topic nor is a lot of people interested in sharing it. Also, there is not as much information, resources and written history about those kingdom as there is for European Kingdoms for example. I believe that all of that makes it harder to find information about that kind of topics but I really enjoyed getting to know a little more about the incredible Kongo Kingdom and tried to pass that information to you!
Sources:
http://www.nairaland.com/1235003/kongo-kingdom…a-underrated-kingdom
http://www.africafederation.net/Kongo_History.htm
and Family members (from Angola)