Khoisan

This article is about the Khoisan ethnic group. For the Khoisan language group, see Khoisan languages.

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The distribution of the Khoi-San language family can be seen in this map of African language families.

Khoisan is the name for two major ethnic groups of southern Africa. From the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic period, hunting and gathering cultures known as the Sangoan occupied southern Africa in areas where the rainfall is less than 40 inches—and today's San and Khoi people resemble the ancient Sangoan skeletal remains. Both share physical and linguistic characteristics, and it seems clear that the Khoi branched forth from the San by adopting the practice of herding cattle and goats from neighboring Bantu groups. The Khoisan people were the original inhabitants of much of southern Africa before the southward Bantu migrations—coming down the east and west coasts of Africa—and later European colonization.

Culturally they are divided into the hunter gatherer Bushmen (sometimes known as San, although this can be seen as derogatory) and the pastoral Khoi (sometimes known as Hottentots, although this is considered obsolete and offensive). The Khoisan languages are noted for their click consonants.

Over the centuries the many branches of the Khoisan peoples have been absorbed or displaced by Bantu peoples migrating south in search of new lands, most notably the Xhosa and Zulu, who both have adopted the Khoisan clicks and some loan words. The Khoisan survived in the desert or in areas with winter rains which were not suitable for Bantu crops. During the colonial era they lived in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana, and were massacred in great numbers by Dutch and English settlers in acts of genocide.^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]} They contributed greatly to the ancestry of South Africa's coloured population.

Today it is in portions of the Kalahari Desert where San people live most nearly as their hunter-gatherer ancestors did.

According to neutral gene analysis, the Khoisan are similar to other sub-Saharan African populations. Physically, however, the Khoisan, with their short frames, copper brown skin,tightly coiled "peppercorn" hair, high cheekbones, and epicanthic eye folds are quite distinct from the darker-skinned peoples who constitute the majority of Africa's population. Two distinguishing features of Khoisan women are their elongated labia minora and tendency to steatopygia,[link] features which contributed greatly to the European fascination with the so-called Hottentot Venus. However, the physical differences between Khoisan and other peoples are diminishing due to intermarriage.

The Khoisan show the largest genetic diversity in mtDNA of all human populations. Y chromosome data^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]} also indicates that they were some of the first lineages to branch from the main human family tree, some 100,000 years ago. The San people themselves say they came first of all human beings, and while many cultures bear that same myth, each of themselves, not only genetic but archaeological evidence bears the Khoisan out. The distinct characteristics of all human varieties, from those of East Asia to those of Northern Europe and the Americas all have beginnings in the physiology of the Khoisan people^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}.

Bibliography

Barnard, Alan (1992) Hunters and Herders of Southern Africa: A Comparative Ethnography of the Khoisan Peoples. New York; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Lee, Richard B. (1976), Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers: Studies of the !Kung San and Their Neighbors, Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore, eds. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Lee, Richard B. (1979), The !Kung San: Men, Women, and Work in a Foraging Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Smith, Andrew; Malherbe, Candy; Guenther, Mat and Berens, Penny (2000), Bushmen of Southern Africa: Foraging Society in Transition. Athens: Ohio University Press. ISBN 0821413414

Thomas, Elizabeth Marshall. The Harmless People.

P. Underhill et al.(2000), "Y chromosome sequence variation and the history of human populations": Nature Genetics, 26, 358-361

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