16/06/2024
Khoisan , is a catch-all term for those indigenous peoples of Southern Africa who do not speak one of the Bantu languages, combining the Khoekhoen (formerly "Hottentots") and the Sān peoples (formerly "Bushmen"). Khoisan populations speak click languages and are considered to be the historical (pre-Bantu) communities in the South African Cape region, through to Namibia, where Khoekhoe populations of Nama and Damara people are prevalent groups, and Botswana.
Many Khoesān peoples are the direct descendants of a very early dispersal of anatomically modern humans to Southern Africa before 150,000 years ago. (However, see below for recent work supporting a multi-regional hypothesis that suggests the Khoisan may be a source population for anatomically modern humans.) Their languages show a vague typological similarity, largely confined to the prevalence of click consonants. They are not verifiably derived from a common proto-language, but are today split into at least three separate and unrelated language families (Khoe-Kwadi, Tuu and Kxʼa). It has been suggested that the Khoekhoeǁaen (Khoekhoe peoples) may represent Late Stone Age arrivals to Southern Africa, possibly displaced by Bantu expansion reaching the area roughly between 1,500 and 2,000 years ago.
Sān are popularly thought of as foragers in the Kalahari Desert and regions of Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho , Tanzania Hadzabe Tribe Adventures and Northern South Africa. The word sān is from the Khoekhoe language and refers to foragers ("those who pick things up from the ground") who do not own livestock. As such, it was used in reference to all hunter-gatherer populations who came into contact with Khoekhoe-speaking communities, and was largely referring to the lifestyle, distinct from a pastoralist or agriculturalist one, and not to any particular ethnicity. While there are attendant cosmologies and languages associated with this way of life, the term is an economic designator rather than a cultural or ethnic one.
