Khoisan

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

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 annual rainfall is less than 40 inches (1016mm)—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, British, and German settlers in acts of genocide (e.g. the Herero and Namaqua Genocide).^{[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 (autosomal) gene analysis, the Khoisan are similar to other sub-Saharan African populations. The study of their Y-chromosomes however shows that their original Y-haplogroup A is the oldest human lineage and could have diverged from the evolutionary tree of other humans more than 100 000 years ago (Knight et al. 2003). Khoisans thus actually represent the most archaic human group that was largely isolated from the rest of mankind for tens of thousands of years. A long time ago, a part of their ancestors headed for north and gave birth to modern Nilotes, which is evident from the presence of a subclade A3b2 in East Africa. According to Knight et al. (2003) Y-haplogroup A is today present in various Khoisan tribes at frequency of 12-44%. The rest is formed by recent admixture of Bantu male lineages E3a (18-54%) and in some tribes, a noticeable Pygmy traces are visible (B2b). The Khoisan also show the largest genetic diversity in mtDNA of all human populations. Their original mtDNA haplogroups L1d and L1k are one of the oldest female lineages as well. 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 may have beginnings in the physiology of the Khoisan people^{[citation needed]}.

Physically the Khoisan, with their short frames (149-163 cm/4'9-5'4; Coon 1965), 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. They have moderately long legs with long bellies, which is a trait that sharply distinguishes them from surrounding Pygmy and Bantu populations having muscles with short bellies and long tendons (Coon 1965). Two distinguishing features of Khoisan women are their elongated labia minora and tendency to steatopygia,[1] features which contributed greatly to the European fascination with the so-called Hottentot Venus. However, the physical differences between Khoisan and other peoples may be diminishing due to intermarriage.

[edit] 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.

Coon, Carleton: The Living Races of Man (1965)

Knight, Alec, et al.: African Y chromosome and mtDNA divergence provides insight into the history of click languages. Current Biology, 13, 464-473 (2003).

Smith, Andrew; Malherbe, Candy; Guenther, Mat and Berens, Penny (2000), Bushmen of Southern Africa: Foraging Society in Transition. Athens: Ohio University Press. ISBN 0-8214-1341-4