[1] Traditions known collectively as the "Shungwaya myth" describe a series of migrations of Bantu peoples dating to the 12th–17th centuries from a region to the north of the Tana River.
[3] Other Bantu ethnic groups, smaller in number, are also suggested to have been part of the migration.
[4] From Shungwaya, the Mount Kenya Bantu (Kamba, Kikuyu, Meru, Embu, and Mbeere) are then proposed to have broke away and migrated from there some time before the Oromo onslaught.
[5] In the 13th century perhaps this settlement was subjected to a full scale invasion of Cushitic speaking Oromo peoples from he Horn of Africa.
[1] The "Zhongli" (中理) of Zhao Rukuo's Zhu Fan Zhi (13th century) may be a Chinese transcription of Shungwaya.