Khoisan

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A San in Botswana

As Khoisan populations are referred to the South and Southwest Africa, where the Khoikhoi and the San belong. The term Khoisan indicates the unity of the population originally called Khoi , which was later divided into Khoikhoi and San. According to genetic studies, the Khoisan are the oldest human group that exists today.

Concept history

The separation of the Khoi into two different groups, the Khoikhoi (" Hottentots ") and that of the San (" Bushmen "), introduced by Europeans , goes back to the 17th century. Physical and economic characteristics were used to classify the residents. The livestock-keeping population was referred to as Khoikhoi, the hunters and gatherers without livestock as San, regardless of whether the societies saw themselves as a homogeneous group. The separation on the basis of economic aspects was, however, supported by the more prosperous Khoi through cattle breeding. Gathering was commonly seen as a "lower" activity than raising livestock. So the name San is not an own name, but an external name, which should clarify this difference.

The word creation Khoisan was first used in 1928 by the anthropologist Leonhard Schultze to express a "racial" connection between Khoikhoi and San that he could recognize .

Even Isaac Schapera used in his work The Khoisan Peoples of South Africa: Bushmen and Hottentots. (1930) used the term Khoisan and defined both societies as a cultural, linguistic and ethnic unit.

In 1963 the term was further defined by the linguist Joseph Greenberg . However, his theory of the three groups: the southern, northern and central Khoisan language fractions is controversial. The internal classification is still controversial, as the languages ​​of the Khoisan are only sparsely researched.

In ethnology , the term is used quite generally for a population group living in southern Africa, regardless of their political or family organizational structures and economic or biological characteristics.

Settlement area and history

Today the Khoisan live mainly in Namibia , South Africa , Botswana and Angola . In the past, their range extended much further north. This is proven by, among others , Hadza and Sandawe, who live in Tanzania . Although they live more than 3,000 kilometers from the Khoisan core area, their languages ​​also belong to the 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.

Both linguistic and archaeological finds show that the Khoisan originally inhabited large parts of Africa south of the equator and were only later displaced by the rural Bantu peoples. The expansion of the Bantu began before the Common Era. The Bantu, armed with crops and iron tools, displaced the scattered hunters and gatherers of the Khoisan peoples within a few centuries . The expansion of the Bantu ended near the 25th parallel ( Pretoria ) - presumably because the crops they brought with them - yam , sorghum , millet - do not thrive in the Mediterranean, winter-humid climate of southern Africa . So the Khoisan were able to withdraw into this area. Only after the arrival of Europeans in southern Africa, who brought Mediterranean plants with them, did the Bantu peoples also colonize southern Africa. As a result of the European conquest, the Khoisan were decimated once more. Immigrant Bantu men and the Khoisan women produced offspring in what is now Zambia, as genetic studies by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the French Center National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Lyon have shown.

Special feature: endurance hunting

The oldest form of human hunting is endurance hunting . It is based on the endurance of humans in running, which is superior to almost all mammals. Fast hunters like cheetahs, which briefly reach speeds of over 100 km / h, can only hold out for a few moments before they collapse exhausted. You have to reach the game in one go, otherwise it will escape. Lions and wild dogs can only withstand high speeds for a short time and must be successful by sneaking, cutting off or circling (i.e. working together in a pack). On the other hand, people, who are well-built for fast running due to their long, relatively strong legs and upright gait, can effectively cool their bodies with around two million sweat glands and can therefore endure a run for hours. The hunters of the Khoisan in southern Africa still hunt down fast ungulates like zebras or ibexes by running after them until they collapse exhausted.

Origin theories

Genetic studies confirm the special position of the Khoisan, which are very close to the roots of the human family tree . For a long time, the hypothesis has therefore been discussed that the clicks and clicks of the Khoisan languages ​​are a relic of the proto or “original language” of man: they are sounds that the Khoisan keep but have lost all other peoples. Critics counter that it could just as well be the other way round, that the Khoisan only accepted these sounds after their ethnic split . One reason could be that these sounds are beneficial in communication between hunters and gatherers .

green : The spread of the Khoisan speech

In a study published in 2012, findings on genetic markers were interpreted with the help of the so-called molecular clock to the effect that the Khoisan tribal line branched off from those of other populations at least 100,000 years ago . The genetic peculiarities have been preserved especially in the ! Kung-San of South Africa.

literature

  • Alan Barnard : Anthropology and the Bushman. Berg, Oxford 2007.
  • Isaac Schapera: The Khoisan Peoples of South Africa: Bushmen and Hottentots. Routledge, London 1930.
  • Susanne Berzborn: Goats and diamonds: securing a livelihood in rural South Africa . Cologne Ethnological Studies Vol. 30, 2006.
  • Joseph H. Greenberg: The Languages ​​of Africa. Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1963.
  • Manuel Viegas Guerreiro, Bochímanes ǃKhu de Angola , Junta de Investigação do Ultramar, Lisbon 1968.
  • James Suzman: Affluence Without Abundance: The disappearing world of the Bushmen . Bloomsbury, 2017.

Web links

Commons : Khoisan  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Carina Schlebusch M. et al .: Genomic Variation in Seven Khoe-San Groups Reveals Adaptation and Complex African History. In: Science . doi: 10.1126 / science.1227721
  2. ^ Alan Barnard : Anthropology and the Bushman. Berg, Oxford 2007, p. 5
  3. ↑ Susanne Berzborn: goats and Diamonds: assurance of livelihood in rural South Africa . Cologne Ethnological Studies Vol. 30, 2006, p. 41
  4. ^ Joseph H. Greenberg: The Languages ​​of Africa. Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1963
  5. ↑ Jared Diamond : Rich and poor. The fates of human societies. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-596-14967-3 , pp. 467-500
  6. ↑ Ancient Khoisan lineages survived in Bantu groups alive today
  7. ↑ The knowledge of the San. Namibia: How cultures meet. ( Memento from June 21, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Jun Z. Li et al .: Worldwide Human Relationships Inferred from Genome-Wide Patterns of Variation. In: Science . Vol. 319, no. 5.866, 2008, pp. 1.100–1.104, doi: 10.1126 / science.1153717 (English).
  9. ↑ Hartmut Traunmüller gives an overview of the arguments: Clicks and the idea of ​​a human protolanguage. In: PHONUM. Vol. 9, 2003, pp. 1–4 (PDF, 58 kB; English).
  10. ↑ Erna van Wyk: Khoe-San peoples are unique, special - largest genomic study finds. eurekalert.org, University of the Witwatersrand , September 20, 2012. Retrieved October 15, 2012 (PHP).
    wbr: Khoi-San: genetic researchers study the oldest people in the world. Spiegel Online , September 21, 2012. Retrieved September 21, 2012.