ǃKung people

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The ǃKung, or ǃXũ as it is also spelled in English, are a people living in the Kalahari Desert in Namibia, Botswana and in Angola. They speak the !Kung language, generally classified as part of the Khoisan language family. They also speak Portuguese in Angola and Afrikaans and English in Namibia. The ǃKung people live in semi-permanent villages of about 10-30 people usually located around a system of water. Once the water and resources around the village are depleted then the tribe relocates to a more resource rich area. They live in a hunting and gathering lifestyle with the men responsible for providing meat, making tools, and maintaining a supply of poison tipped arrows and spears. The women provide for most of the food by spending between two and three days per week foraging for roots, nuts and berries in the Kalahari Desert^[1]

[edit] Mythology

The ǃKung people of southern Africa are both animistic and animatistic; they believe in both personifications and impersonal forces. They believe in a god named Prishiboro, whose wife was an elephant. His older brother tricked him into killing her and, later, into eating her flesh. Her herd tried to kill Prishiboro in revenge, but his brother defeated them.

ǃKung people also have many taboos concerning the dead as they believe that the ghosts of the deceased would cause them injury or death. It is against the rules to even say a name of someone dead, once an annual ceremony to release the spirits of the dead has been performed.

The ǃKung practice shamanism in order to communicate with the spirit world, and to cure what they call Star Sickness. The communication with the spirit world is done by a shaman entering a trance state and running through a fire, thereby chasing away bad spirits. Star Sickness is cured by laying hands on the diseased.

[edit] Use of Kinship Terms

The ǃKung classify everyone who bears the same name as close kinsmen as if they were relatives proper. If a ǃKung man's sister is called Kxaru (a female name), then all women named Kxaru are his "sisters." A ǃKung man may not sit too close to his sisters or tell sexual jokes in their presence, and of course he cannot marry them. The same rules apply to his sisters' namesakes. Such customs identify "true" and not merely metaphorical kinship — at least as the ǃKung see it. The ǃKung believe that all namesakes are descended from the same original namesake ancestor, and in effect they treat the status of namesake as a genealogical position, like father, mother, brother, sister, son or daughter.