WE ARE ALL BUSHMEN AND WOMEN

By Nick Gier, Professor Emeritus, University of Idaho

nickgier@uidaho.edu

In August of this year I was very close to the area where scientists have determined is the origin of all humankind.  As reported in the May 22 issue of the journal Science, genetic markers on the Y-chromosome indicate that our migration out of Africa began on the Atlantic coastal border of Namibia and Angola. I was just 250 miles southeast enjoying the amazing wildlife of Etosha National Park.  (The image on the left is the Epupa Falls on the Kuene River separating Namibia and Angola.)

          About 90,000 of our most ancient ancestors are still living in Southern Africa, and some of them are employees in the safari camps I visited. Physically distinct from other Africans with their lighter skin and "East Asian" eyes, they are properly called the San people (sometimes KhoiSan to include the Khoi tribe), but the early Dutch settlers gave them the pejorative name "bushmen."

The Genographic Project and Human Origins

          Homo sapiens left Africa as early as 130,000 years ago during a warming period, but most scientists agree that they did not survive.  Evidence from the Israeli archeological sites Skhul and Qafzeh demonstrates that Neanderthals, who had lived through several ice ages in Eurasia for at least 300,000 years, took over the caves that retreating humans left behind.  A hundred thousand years later it would be the Neanderthals who moved along, and last of them might have expired near the Rock of Gibraltar.

          Most likely forced to move because of drought, ancestors of the San began a second migration 65,000 years ago. Genetic evidence taken from indigenous peoples in Africa and Asia by the Genographic Project traces a route up the coast of East Africa, over the Red Sea to the Arabia Peninsula through the Middle East down into India, and finally over to Indonesia and Australia.  Described as "beachcomers" by Stephen Oppenheimer, these people thrived and multiplied in mild temperatures and an abundance of food, especially from the sea.

          Some indigenous peoples have criticized the Genographic Project as a Euro-American attempt to undermine stories about their unique origins.  Just as fundamentalist Christians claim that evolution undermines their creation story (claimed as "science" by many of them), many indigenous peoples argue something very similar.

 In May 2006 native representatives at the UN's Permanent Forum stated: "The Genographic Project is exploitative and unethical because it will use Indigenous peoples as subjects of scientific curiosity in research that provides no benefit to Indigenous peoples." The scientists of the Genographic Project of course respect these views, but they are also gratified that over 50,000 indigenous people have agreed to submit to the necessary blood tests.

San Art: Paintings and Beads

San rock art, which I saw in Namibia at Twyfelfontein, and from the Drakensberg Caves in South Africa that I viewed on the web, compares favorably to the famous Paleolithic paintings in Southern France.  For my tastes, however, nothing can beat the sheer imaginative power of the first Australians, whose art I saw at Kakadu National Park near Darwin in 1995.  This artwork goes back tens of thousands of years and all of these ancient peoples are genetically linked.

As the San moved out of Southwest Africa towards the east coast, they took with them not only a sophisticated microlithic tool kit but also shell beads (image on left), the oldest (dated at 77,000 years) such ornaments in the current archeological record.  (It was always assumed that beads were invented by Cro-Magnon peoples of Paleolithic Europe about 40,000 years ago.)  One scientist has speculated that trade in these beads, plus the San policy of sharing meat, were advantages in their survival during their long journey to Asia.

Poisoned Arrows, MAD, and Diet Cacti

          For thousands of years the San roamed all over Southern Africa as expert hunter-gatherers.  Gradually, however, they were, over the last 1,500 years, pushed into the Kalahari Desert by Bantu pastoralists who thought that the San were less than human because they did not herd cattle.  The two major Bantu tribes, the Xhosa and the Zulu, picked up the clicks in their language from the San. One of the clicks is represented by the "!" in the San tribe !Kung.

The popular movie The Gods Must Be Crazy stars a native man named Xi, who is played by the Namibian San N!xan. (He is the one of the right inspecting a Coke bottle.) In this slapstick comedy Xi appears to be the only sane and intelligent human being in Botswana. Before being cast in the film N!xan had only seen three white men in his life.  After learning the value of paper money after spending it all, he made sure that he received much more than $2,000 in the next three films that he made.

There is a scene in The Gods Must Be Crazy where Xi shoots a goat with his bow and a potion-tipped arrow.  The impression given is that this potion is an anesthetic, and this implication is strengthened later on when Xi disables some crazy rebels by shooting them with a tiny bow and darts dipped in a game warden's anesthetic. The fact, however, is that the mixture on the San's arrows is deadly poison that, according to Alf Wannenburgh, sets up a San version of MAD, i.e., mutually assured destruction.  San men would know that any violence among them would mean their own demise.  This theory gives the reason for San pacifism a decidedly different twist.

The San are ingenious at living off the land, finding water where no one else can and deriving food and medicine from over 1,000 different plants.  The Hoodia gordonii cactus, which the San use from hunger suppression and quick energy, is now being used in contemporary weight loss drugs.  The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in South Africa has run experiments demonstrating that subjects who took the cactus extract were able "reduce their calorie intake by more than 30 percent each day."

Removal of the San from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve

          Persecution of the San by the Bantus of Botswana continues.  In 1997 the government decreed that all the San had to leave their ancestral land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. The government claims their presence there is inconsistent with principles of reserve management, but critics say that the removal is primarily because diamonds have been discovered there.

Most of the San (a few of them refused to move) have been resettled and given livestock and seed to grow crops.  Clinics and schools have also been provided. As with all indigenous people removed by force, the San have fared very poorly in the last 12 years.  Alcoholism, tuberculosis, and HIV, unknown to them in the wilderness, have ravaged the their vulnerable communities.

In 2006 these San won a court victory recognizing their right to return to their ancestral land, but the government of Botswana has done everything to prevent them from doing so. As he sees his elders dying prematurely in the resettlement camps, San spokesman Roy Sesana declares that "they are our hospital, they are our clinics, they are our doctors.  The land itself that we've been holding is our mother.  So if you separate us from that mother, what is going to happen to us." 

A Coke Bottle and the Future of the San

          The Gods Must Be Crazy begins with an empty Coke, thrown out of plane, landing in the San camp.  The bottle is put to various uses, but as there is only one of them, it cannot be shared.  Fights over possession of the bottle lead to violence, and Xi agrees to take it to the end of the earth so that it will not curse them again. The Coke bottle is symbolic of the evils of the outside world, and the movie suggests that the San would be well advised to stay in the desert and preserve their ancient ways.  This romantic notion, however, may be not be realistic. 

Even in the wilderness San life is not all that rosy.  The Kalahari Meerkat Project reports that about 50 percent of their children die before they are 15, and 20 percent die in their first year.  Life expectancy is estimated between 40 and 50 years.  Only 10 percent survive past the age of 60. As with all indigenous peoples facing integration into contemporary society, a fine balance between preserving language and culture and benefiting from modern medicine and education must be attained.