A look into Africa's Oldest tribe

The San 'Bushmen'  also known as Khwe, Sho, and Basarwa are the oldest inhabitants of southern Africa, (and are part of the Khoisan group), where they have lived for at least 20,000 years. They are hunter-gatherer peoples of southern Africa. Genetic evidence also suggests the San Bushmen are one of the oldest peoples in the world. Their home is in the vast expanse of the Kalahari desert.

The Bushmen are the remnants of Africa's oldest cultural group, genetically the closest surviving people to the original Homo sapiens “core” from which the Negroid people of Africa emerged. Bushmen are small in stature generally with light yellowish skin, which wrinkles very early in life. Bushmen traditionally lived in Southern Africa in the following countries, although virtually none live purely by hunting and gathering today: Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Angola, with loosely related groups in Tanzania.

They have a rich  oral history that's passed from generation to another.

The Bushmen are hunter-gatherers, 75% of their diet consists of vegetable, including berries, walnuts, roots and melons, that are mainly harvested by women; while the remaining 25% is made up of meat that is hunted by men who hunt, using poisoned arrows and spears.

One weird fact about this group of people is that they neither cultivate crops nor domesticate animals.

The life of the San is characterized and influenced by the inhospitable territory where they live, 20% of the children die in the first year of life, 50% die before the age of 15, while the average life expectation is about 45- 50 years and only 10% get over 60 years of age.

The San do a rite of passage for both women and men.

The rite of passage for a boy is his first hunting trip; while girls, when they become women, have to dance the dance of the eland and, when they are menstruating, they must remain segregated in a hut.

The San are not wasteful and every part of the animal is used. The hides are tanned for blankets and the bones are cracked for the marrow. Water is hard to come by, as the San are constantly on the move. Usually during the dry season, these migrants collect their moisture by scraping and squeezing roots. If they are out hunting or travelling, they would dig holes in the sand to find water. They also carry water in an ostrich eggshell.

San Rituals

The Eland is their most spiritual animal and appears in 4 rituals:

• Boys' first kill
• Girls' puberty
• Marriage
• Trance dance

A ritual is held where the boy is told how to track an Eland and how the Eland will fall once shot with an arrow. The boy will become an adult when he kills his first large antelope, preferably an Eland. 

Once caught, the Eland is skinned and the fat from the animal's throat and collarbone is made into a broth. In the girls' puberty rituals, a young girl is isolated in her hut at her first menstruation. The women of the tribe perform the Eland Bull Dance where they imitate the mating behaviour of the Eland cows.

A man will play the part of the Eland bull, usually with horns on his head.  This ritual will keep the girl beautiful, free from hunger and thirst and peaceful. As part of the marriage ritual, the man gives the fat from the Elands' heart to the girls' parents. At a later stage, the girl is anointed with Eland fat. In the trance dance, the Eland is considered the most potent of all animals, and the shamans aspire to possess Eland potency. The San believed that the Eland was /Kaggen's favourite animal. San people have vast oral traditions, and many of their tales include stories about the gods that serve to educate listeners about what is considered moral San behaviour.

Life of the San today

Today, the San suffer from a perception that their lifestyle is 'primitive' and that they need to be made to live like the majority cattle-herding tribes. Specific problems vary according to where they live. In South Africa, for example, the !Khomani now have most of their land rights recognised, but many other San tribes have no land rights at all. Few modern San are able to continue as hunter-gatherers, and most live at the very bottom of the social scale, in unacceptable conditions of poverty, leading to alcoholism, violence, prostitution, disease and despair. 

The last of the hunter-gatherers were forcibly evicted from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve as recently as April 2002, by the Botswana government to make way for diamond mines. A court case is currently in so as to ensure that the San bushmen regains their lands.