Khoisan
As Khoisan populations in the South and Southwest Africa are referred to belonging to the Khoikhoi and San. The term Khoisan population indicates the unity of the light as Khoi, but later called the Khoikhoi and San on. The Khoisan are the oldest still existing group people according to genetic studies.
Conceptual history
Introduced by Europeans separation of the Khoi in two different groups of Khoikhoi ( " Hottentots " ) and the San ( " Bushmen " ), dates back to the 17th century. In order to classify the inhabitants, used to physical and economic characteristics. It described the cattle holding population as Khoikhoi, the stockless hunter-gatherers as San regardless of whether the companies saw themselves as a homogeneous group. The separation based on economic aspects, however, was supported by the more prosperous by Khoi livestock. Gathering was widely viewed as " lower" activity over that of the cattle breeding. Thus the designation of San is not a proper name, but a foreign label to illustrate this difference.
The neologism Khoisan was first used in 1928 by the anthropologist Leonhard Schultze to express a detectable for him " racial" connection between Khoikhoi and San.
Isaac Schapera also used in his work, The Khoisan Peoples of South Africa: Bushmen and Hottentots. (1930 ) the term Khoisan and defined both societies as a cultural, linguistic and ethnic unity.
1963, the term is defined by the linguist Joseph Greenberg on. His theory of the three groups: the southern, northern and central Khoisan frets is still controversial. The internal classification is still controversial, as the languages of the Khoisan have been explored only sparingly.
In anthropology, the term is generally used for Headquartered in southern Africa population, regardless of their political or family organizational structures and economic or biological characteristics.
Settlement area and history
The Khoisan today live mainly in Namibia, South Africa, Botswana and Angola. Previously filed their range much further north. Which is documented by living in Tanzania Hadza and Sandawe. Although they live more than 3,000 kilometers away from the core area of the Khoisan, including their languages, Khoisan language family. Many of the up to 20,000 -year-old rock carvings in southern Africa are placed in the history of these groups of people.
Prove both linguistic as well as archaeological finds that the Khoisan originally large parts of Africa south of the Equator and inhabited until later supplanted by rural Bantu peoples were. The expansion of the Bantu began before our era. The Bantu, equipped with arable crops and iron tools, displaced within a few centuries the scattered surviving hunter-gatherers of the Khoisan peoples. The spread of Bantu ended near the 25th degree of latitude (Pretoria ) - presumably because the crops they brought - yam, sorghum, millet - not thrive in the Mediterranean, winter humid climate of southern Africa. Thus, the Khoisan could retire in this area. Only after the arrival of Europeans in southern Africa, who brought Mediterranean plants, populated Bantu peoples and southern Africa. As a result of the European conquest, the Khoisan were decimated one more time. Immigrant Bantu men with the Khoisan women on the territory of today's Zambia offspring begotten as genetic studies at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, and the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS ) have demonstrated in Lyon.
Special feature: endurance hunting
The oldest form of human hunting is the hunting endurance. This is based on the opposite almost all mammals superior endurance of the human running. Fast hunters like cheetah, can reach the short time speeds of over 100 km / h, this can only hold out for a few moments before they would collapse exhausted. You must reach the wild game in a start-up, otherwise it's escape. Even lions or wild dogs maintain high speeds by only a short time and need to stalking, Wegabschneiden or circling (ie interaction in the pack ) come to success. The well-built through the long, relatively strong legs and walk upright for fast running man, however, can by its approximately two million sweat his body effectively cool and therefore hold a run for hours. The hunters of the Khoisan in southern Africa succumbed today fast hoofed animals such as zebras or steenbok by them so long to run after them until they collapse exhausted.
Origin theories
Genetic studies confirm the special position of the Khoisan, which are very close to the root of the human family tree. For a long time, therefore, the hypothesis is discussed, after which click and clicking sounds of the Khoisan languages are a relic of the Proto - or " proto-language " of man: if it were sounds that retain the Khoisan, all other nations have lost it. Critics counter that it could be just as, conversely, that the Khoisan these sounds have accepted only after their ethnic secession. One reason could be that these sounds are in the communication of the hunter-gatherers of advantage.
In a 2012 study published findings were interpreted to genetic markers using the so-called molecular clock that the tribal line of Khoisan diverged at least 100,000 years ago from those of other populations. The genetic features have survived especially in the! Kung San of South Africa.