| Total population | |||
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| 1000 | |||
| Regions with significant populations | |||
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| Languages | |||
| Related ethnic groups | |||
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None known[2] |
The Hadza, or Hadzabe,[3][4] are an ethnic group in north-central Tanzania, living around Lake Eyasi in the central Rift Valley and in the neighboring Serengeti Plateau. The Hadza number just under 1000.[1][5] Some 300–400 Hadza live as hunter-gatherers, much as their ancestors have for thousands or even tens of thousands of years; they are the last full-time hunter-gatherers in Africa.
The Hadza are not closely genetically related to any other people.[2] While traditionally classified with the Khoisan languages, primarily because it has clicks, the Hadza language appears to be an isolate, unrelated to any other.[6] The descendants of Tanzania's aboriginal hunter-gatherer population, they have probably occupied their current territory for several thousand years, with relatively little modification to their basic way of life until the past hundred years.[7] From the 18th century onwards, however, the Hadza came into increasing contact with farming and herding people entering Hadzaland and its vicinity from elsewhere;[8] their interaction with these peoples were often hostile and caused a period of population decline in the late 19th century.[9] In the late 19th century the Hadza came into contact with Europeans, who produced the first written accounts of them.[9] Since then there has been numerous attempts by successive colonial administrations, the independent Tanzanian government, and foreign missionaries to settle the Hadza, force them to adopt farming, and convert them to Christianity.[10] These have largely failed, and many Hadza still pursue virtually the same way of life as their ancestors are described as having in early 20th century accounts.[11] In recent years they have been under pressure from neighbouring groups encroaching on their land, and also affected by tourism and safari hunting.[12][13][14]
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The Hadza's oral history of their own past is divided into four epochs, each inhabited by a different culture. According to this tradition, in the beginning of time the world was inhabited by hairy giants called the Akakaanebe or Gelanebe "ancestors". The Akakaanebe did not possess tools or fire; they hunted game by staring at it and it fell dead; they ate the meat raw. They did not build houses but slept under trees, as the Hadza do today in the dry season. In older versions of this story fire was not used because it was physically impossible in the earth's primeval state, while younger Hadza, who have been to school, say that the Akakaanebe simply did not know how. The Akakaanebe were succeeded by the Tlaatlanebe, equally gigantic but without hair. In this second epoch fire could be made and used to cook meat, but animals had grown more wary of humans and had to be chased and hunted with dogs. The Tlaatlanebe were the first people to use medicines and charms to protect themselves from enemies and initiated the epeme rite. They lived in caves. The third epoch was inhabited by the Hamakwabe "nowadays", who were again smaller than their predecessors. They invented bows and arrows and containers for cooking and further mastered the use of fire. They also built houses like those of the present day Hadza. The Hamakwabe were the first of the Hadza's ancestors to have contact with non-foraging people, with whom they traded for iron to fashion into knives and arrowheads. The Hamakwabe are also attributed with the invention of lukuchuko, a gambling game. The fourth and final epoch continues to the present day and is inhabited by the Hamaishonebe "modern". Often when discussing the Hamaishonebe epoch people mention specific names and places, and can approximately say how many generations ago events occurred.[15]
The Hadza are not closely related to any other people. Hadza was once classified with the Khoisan languages because it has clicks, but there is no real evidence they are related, and Hadza is now usually considered an isolate. Genetically, the Hadza do not appear to be particularly closely related to other Khoisan-language-speakers: even the Sandawe, who live just 150 km away, diverged from the Hadza more than 15,000 years ago. Genetic testing also suggests significant admixture has occurred between the Hadza and Bantu, Nilotic and Cushitic-speaking populations in the last few thousand years.[2] Today a small number of Hadza women marry into neighbouring groups such as the Bantu Isanzu and the Nilotic Datoga, but these marriages often fail and the woman and her children return to the Hadza. In previous decades rape or capture of Hadza women by outsiders seems to have been common.[16] The reverse situation (Hadza men marrying non-Hadza women) is very rare today, probably because their neighbours view the Hadza as having low status, although during a famine in 1918-20 some Hadza men are reported as taking Isanzu wives.[17]
The Hadza's ancestors have probably lived in their current territory for a very long time. Hadzaland is just 50 km from Olduvai Gorge, an area sometimes called the "Cradle of Mankind" because of the number of hominin fossils found there, and 40 km from the prehistoric site of Laetoli. Archaeological evidence suggests that the area has been continuously occupied by hunter gatherers much like the Hadza since at least the beginning of the Later Stone Age, 50,000 years ago. Although they do not make rock art today, several rock art sites within their territory, probably at least two thousand years old, are considered by the Hadza to have been created by their ancestors, and their own oral history does not suggest they moved to Hadzaland from elsewhere.[18]
Until about 500 BCE Tanzania was exclusively occupied by hunter-gatherers akin to the Hadza. The first agriculturalists to enter the region where Cushitic-speaking cattle herders from the Horn of Africa. Around 500 CE the Bantu expansion reached Tanzania, bringing populations of farmers with iron tools and weapons. The last major ethnic group to enter the region were Nilotic pastoralists who migrated south from Sudan in the 18th century.[19] Each of these expansions of farming and herding peoples displaced earlier populations of hunter-gatherers, who would have generally been at a demographic and technological disadvantage, and vulnerable to the loss of environment resources (i.e., foraging areas and habitats for game) as a result of the spread of farmland and pastures.[20] Groups such as the Hadza and the Sandawe are therefore remnants of indigenous hunter-gatherer populations that were once much more widespread, and are under pressure from the continued expansion of agriculture into areas which they have traditionally occupied.
Farmers and herders appeared in the vicinity of Hadzaland relatively recently. The pastoralist Iraqw and Datoga were both forced to migrate into the area by the expansion of the Maasai, the former in the 19th century and the latter in the 1910s. The Isanzu, a Bantu-speaking farming people, began living just south of Hadzaland around 1850. The Hadza also have contact with the Maasai and the Sukuma west of Lake Eyasi.[8] The Hadza's interaction with many of these peoples has been hostile. In particular, the upheavals caused by the Maasai expansion in the late 19th century caused a decline in the Hadza population. Pastoralists often killed Hadza as reprisals for the "theft" of livestock, since the Hadza did not have the notion that one could own animals and would hunt them as they would wild game. The Isanzu were also hostile to the Hadza at times, and may have captured them for the slave trade until as late as the 1870s (when it was halted by the German colonial government). Later their interaction was more peaceable, with the two peoples sometimes intermarrying and residing together, though as late as 1912 the Hadza are reported as being "ready for war" with the Isanzu. The Sukuma and the Hadza also had a more amiable relationship; the Sukuma drove their herds and salt caravans through Hadza lands, and exchanged old metal tools, which the Hadza made into arrowheads, for the right to hunt elephants in Hadzaland. The general attitude of neighbouring agro-pastoralists towards the Hadza was prejudicial; they viewed them a backwards people, not possessing a "real language" and made up of the dispossessed of neighbouring tribes that had fled into the forest out of poverty or because they committed a crime. Many of these misconceptions were transmitted to early colonial visitors to the region who wrote about the Hadza.[9]
In the late 19th century European powers claimed much of the African continent as colonies, a period known as the Scramble for Africa. The Hadza became part of German East Africa, though at the time the colony was proclaimed there is no evidence that Hadzaland had ever been visited by Europeans. The earliest mention of the Hadza in a written account is in German explorer Oscar Baumann's Durch Massailand zur Nilquelle (1894). The Hadza hid from Baumann and other early explorers, and their descriptions are based on second hand accounts. The first Europeans to report actually meeting the Hadza are Otto Dempwolff and Erich Obst. The latter lived with them for eight weeks in 1911. German Tanganyika came under British control at the end of the First World War (1917), and soon after the Hadza were written about by British colonial officer F. J. Bagshawe. The accounts of these early European visitors portray the Hadza at the beginning of the 20th century as living in much the same way as they do today. Early on Obst noted a distinction between the 'pure' Hadza (that is, those subsisting purely by hunting and gathering) and those that lived with the Isanzu and practised some cultivation. The foraging Hadza exploited the same foods using many of the same techniques they do today, though game was more plentiful because farmers had not yet begun directly encroaching on their lands. Some early reports describe the Hadza as having chiefs or big men, but they were probably mistaken; more reliable accounts portray early 20th century Hadza as egalitarian, as they are today.[9] They also lived in similarly sized camps, used the same tools, built houses in the same style and had similar religious beliefs.[11]
The British colonial government attempted to make the Hadza to settle down and adopt farming in 1927, the first of many government attempts to settle them. The British tried again in 1939, as did the independent Tanzanian government in 1965 and 1990, and various foreign missionary groups from the 1960s onwards. Though many involved the use of force, these attempts have by and large been failures; generally the Hadza will willingly settle and take advantage of food when it is freely provided to them, but leave and return to foraging when the food runs out, and few have permanent adopted farming. There is also a problem with disease – because they live at low population densities and are relatively isolated few Hadza possess immunity to common infectious diseases such as measles, which thrive in sedentary communities, and several settlement attempts have ended with outbreaks of illness resulting in many deaths, particularly of children. Of the four villages built for the Hadza since 1965, two (Yaeda Chini and Munguli) are now inhabited by the Isanzu, Iraqw and Datoga. Another, Mongo wa Mono, established in 1988, is sporadically occupied by Hadza groups who stay there for a few months at a time, either farming, foraging or taking advantage of food given to them by missionaries. Hadza children still attend the school at the fourth village, Endamagha (also known as Mwonyembe), but they account for just a third of the students there. Numerous attempts to convert the Hadza to Christianity have also been largely unsuccessful.[10]
Tanzanian farmers began moving into the Mangola area to grow onions in the 1940s, however the did not come in significant numbers until the 1960s. The first German plantation in Hadzaland was established in 1928, and subsequently three families of white Europeans have settled in the area. From the 1960s onwards the Hadza have been visited regularly by anthropologists, linguists, geneticists and other researchers.[21]
In recent years the Hadza's territory has seen increasing encroachment from neighbouring groups. The western Hadza lands are on a private hunting reserve, and the Hadza are officially restricted to a reservation within the reserve and not allowed to hunt. The Yaeda Valley, long uninhabited due to the tsetse fly, is now occupied by Datooga herders; the Datooga are clearing the Hadza lands on either side of the now fully settled valley for pasture for their goats and cattle. They hunt out the game, and the clearing destroys the berries, tubers, and honey that the Hadza rely on, and watering holes for their cattle causes the shallow watering holes the Hadza rely on to dry up.[12] The Mang'ola region has become the principal onion farming area in all of East Africa, with immigration for work bringing the population up from 2000 in the 1984 census to 38,000 in the 2004 census, and perhaps 50,000 in 2008.
After documentaries on the Hadza on PBS and the BBC in 2001, the Mang'ola Hadza became a tourist attraction; although this has given being Hadza monetary value, it also introduced alcohol for the first time, and alcoholism and deaths from alcohol poisoning have recently become severe problems.[13] There has also been a concomitant epidemic of tuberculosis.
In 2007, the local government controlling the Hadza lands adjacent to the Yaeda Valley leased all of this, 6,500 km², to the Al Nahyan royal family of the United Arab Emirates, for use as a "personal safari playground",[14] and both the Hadza and Datooga were evicted, with some Hadza resisters imprisoned. However, after protests from the Hadza and negative coverage in the international press, the deal was rescinded.[22]
There are four traditional areas of Hadza dry-season habitation: West of the southern end of Lake Eyasi (Dunduhina), between Lake Eyasi and the Yaeda Valley swamp to the east (Tlhiika), east of the Yaeda Valley in the Mbulu Highlands (Siponga), and north of the valley around the town of Mang'ola (Mangola). During the wet season the Hadza camp outside and between these areas, and readily travel between them during the dry season as well. Access to and from the western area is by crossing the southern end of the lake, which is the first part to dry up, or by following the escarpment of the Serengeti Plateau around the northern shore. The Yaeda Valley is easily crossed, and the areas on either side abut the hills south of Mang'ola.
The Hadza have traditionally foraged outside these areas, in the Yaeda Valley, on the slopes of Mount Oldeani north of Mang'ola, and up onto the Serengeti Plains. Such foraging is done for hunting, berry collecting, and for honey. Although hunting is illegal in the Serengeti, the Tanzanian authorities recognize that the Hadza are a special case and do not enforce the regulations with them, just as the Hadza are the only people in Tanzania not taxed locally or by the national government.
The Hadza are organized into bands, called 'camps' in the literature, of typically 20–30 people, though of over a hundred may form during berry season. There is no tribal or other governing hierarchy, and conflict may be resolved by one of the parties voluntarily moving to another camp.
The Hadza move camp for a number of reasons. Conflict is resolved primarily by leaving camp; camps frequently split for this reason. Camps are abandoned when someone falls ill and dies, as illness is associated with the place they fell ill. There is also seasonal migration between dry-season refuges, better hunting grounds while water is more abundant, and areas with large numbers of tubers or berry trees when they are in season. If a man kills a particularly large animal such as a giraffe far from home, a camp will temporarily relocate to the kill site. (Smaller animals are brought back to the camp.) Shelters can be built in a few hours, and most of the possessions owned by an individual can be carried on their backs.
The Hadza, like many predominantly hunter-gatherer societies, are predominantly monogamous, though there is no social enforcement of monogamy.[5] While men and woman value traits such as hard work when evaluating for mates they also value physical attractiveness. In fact, many of their preferences for attractiveness, such as symmetry,[23] averageness[24] and sexually dimorphic voice pitch[25] are similar to preferences found in Western countries.
Hadza men usually forage individually, and during the course of day usually feed themselves while foraging, and also bring home some honey, fruit, or wild game when available. Women forage in larger parties, and usually bring home berries, baobab fruit [1], and tubers, depending on availability. Men and women also forage co-operatively for honey and fruit, and at least one adult male will usually accompany a group of foraging women. During the wet season, the diet is composed mostly of honey, some fruit, tubers, and occasional meat. The contribution of meat to the diet increases in the dry season, when game become concentrated around sources of water. During this time, men often hunt in pairs, and spend entire nights lying in wait by waterholes, hoping to shoot animals that approach for a night-time drink, with bows and arrows treated with poison.[26] The poison is made of the branches of the shrub Adenium coetaneum.[27] The Hadza are highly skilled, selective, and opportunistic foragers, and adjust their diet according to season and circumstance. Depending on local availability, some groups might rely more heavily on tubers, others on berries, others on meat. This variability is the result of their opportunism and adjustment to prevailing conditions.
Traditionally, the Hadza do not make use of hunting dogs, although this custom has been recently borrowed from neighboring tribes to some degree. Most men (80%+) do not use dogs when foraging.
Women's foraging technology includes the digging stick, grass baskets for carrying berries, large fabric or skin pouches for carrying items, knives, shoes, other clothing, and various small items held in a pouch around the neck. Men carry axes, bows, poisoned and non-poisoned arrows, knives, small honey pots, fire drills, shoes and apparel, and various small items.
While men specialize in procuring meat, honey, and baobab fruit, women specialize in tubers, berries, and greens. This division of labor is rather apparent, but women will occasionally gather a small animal or egg, or gather honey, and men will occasionally bring a tuber or some berries back to camp.
A myth depicts a woman harvesting the honey of wild bees, and at the same time, it declares that the job of honey harvesting belongs to the men.[28] For harvesting honey or fruit from large trees such as the baobab, the Hadza beat pointed sticks into the trunk of the tree as ladders. This technique is depicted in a tale,[29] and it is also documented in film.[30]
There exists a mutualistic relationship between honey-guide and mammals: in order to obtain wax, the bird guides people and honey-badgers to the nests of wild bees. The Hadza whistle "dialogs" with the honey-guide that mimic the bird's song.[31] The role of the honey-guide is reflected also in Hadza mythology, both in naturalistic[32] and personified forms.[33]
There are some mythological figures who are believed to take part in arranging the world, for example rolling the sky and the earth like two sheets of leather and swapping their order to achieve the recent situation – in the past the sky used to locate under the earth.[34] These figures also have made crucial decisions about the animals and humans (designating their food, environment),[35] giving people the fire and the capability of sitting.[36] These figures have celestial connotations: Ishoko is a solar figure, Haine is a lunar figure.[37]
The character under the name "Ishoye" seems to be identical with Ishoko.[37][38] She is depicted in some tales as someone who created animals, even people.[39][40] Her creatures included also some people who later turned out to be a disaster for their fellow people (the man-eating giant and his wife): as Ishoko saw this, she killed the man-eaters: "you are not people any longer".[41]
Uttering Ishoko's name can mean a greeting, a good wish to someone for a successful hunt.[42]
Ishoko is the wife of Haine.[43]
Indaya, the man who went to the Isanzu territory after his death and returned,[44] plays the role of a culture hero: he introduces customs and goods to the Hadza.[45]
The Isanzu people neighbor the Hadza. Unlike the Iraqw and the cattle-raiding Maasai (who used to lead raids towards Isanzu and Iramba through Hadza territory), the hoe-farming Isanzu are regarded as a peaceful people by Hadza. Moreover, many goods and customs comes from them, and the Hadza myths mention and depict this benevolent influence of the Isanzu. This advantageous view about Isanzu makes the role of this people comparable to that of a culture hero in Hadza folklore.[46]
Also in some of the mythical stories about giants (see below), it is an Isanzu man who liberates the Hadza from the malevolent giant.[45]
The stories about giants describe people with superhuman strength and size, but otherwise with human weaknesses (they have human needs, eat and drink, they can be poisoned, cheated).
One of the giants, Sengani, was Haine's helper, and Haine gave him power to rule over people. In Haine's absence, the giant endangered people with his decisions. The people had to resist him, thus the giant ordered the lions to attack people, which surprised people, because formerly lions were regarded as harmless beings. The people killed the giant in revenge.[47]
This giant had brothers, "Ssaabo" and "Waonelakhi". Several tales describe the disaster these giants caused to Hadza by constantly killing, beating them. The Hadza had to ask for help from neighboring groups, finally, the giants were tricked and poisoned, or shot to death by arrows treated with poison.[48]
A man-eating giant, "!esengego" (and his family) was killed by a benevolent snake. The snake turned out to be the remedy applied by Ishoko to liberate people. Ishoko changed the corpses of the giant family into leopards. He prohibited them to attack people, except for the case they would be provoked or wounded by an arrow.[49]
Another giant, "!Hongongoschá", played the role of a mythological figure. He did not bother Hadza (except for some smaller stealths done secretly at night), his nourishment was flowers of trees (and stolen vegetables). People greeted him with great respect, and the giant wished them good hunting luck, which indeed realized. The giant provided further his good wish to people even after he was hurt deliberately by a boy, but he took a fatal revenge on the boy. Finally, the god Haine decided about the fate of this giant and the people: he warned people, revealed the malevolent deed of the boy, and changed the giant into a big white clam.[50]