Do you know the Khoisan were once the largest groups of human beings on earth? Do you also know their economic activity was hunting and gathering? Something must have gone wrong for this South African tribe to be reduced to just 100, 000 people today. In this article, we’ll dig deep into their history.
The name “Khoisan’’ was a term used to refer to hunters and gatherers and a group of people that speak a common language. So, in the past, we had two groups. The first one was the Khoi Khoi who were pastoralists or herders. The San was the second group who were hunters and gatherers. Many people today know the Khoi and the San groups as the “ Khoisan”
The Khoisan not only habited South Africa but in Namibia as well. And even up to date, the Khoisan in Africa still perceives themselves as one of the oldest groups in the continent. They have also maintained their tradition of hunting and gathering.
Just like other ancient groups of people in Africa, the Khoisan had their own culture and tradition. They were expected to marry amongst their clans. Therefore men of one clan would marry women from another clan. And where a woman fails to get married among the Khoisan people, he would be expelled from the tribe. Men from the same clan were also to stay in the same village. And these villages were inhabited by more than 100 people, who stayed in cone-shaped huts.
The coming of the European colonialists to Africa is one of the reasons that lead to the extinction of the Khoisan Group as echoed by President Jacob Zuma that the Khoisan people were the most hit by the European Colonialisms. Other factors that contributed to the latter include war, diseases, and theft.
Image Credit: South Africa Tours and Travel
Africa Global News Publication
Absolute African apologist nonsense. The reason for the massive depopulation was the black Bantu migrations south from West Africa; slaughtering the Khoisan down to a tiny fraction of their previous population. Look at Khoi rock art portraying conflict with Bantu Warriors. The Genetics also indicate that Y-lineages of San people and pygmy populations almost disappeared during the Bantu expansion, but not the mDNA lineages, which indicate that males were killed, and Bantu must’ve killed a significant part of the foraging tribes, and mainly men.