Luba ancestral statueFemale Luba ancestral statue of carved wood; in the Musée de l'Homme, Paris.
Luba, or Baluba, Cluster of some 5.6 million Bantu-speaking peoples who share a common political history surrounding the Luba-Lunda states. They are savanna and forest dwellers who hunt and gather, engage in agriculture, and keep livestock; they also fish intensively in the Congo and its tributaries. They have associations for hunting, magic, and medicine and a well-developed oral tradition that includes epic cycles. Two groups are noted as wood-carvers.