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- Early observers of the Khoi peoples noted features of their culture that
set them apart from both San and Bantu. It was widely assumed these were
evidence of Semitic origins.
- Kolb (1731) observes ‘These customs, in which the Hottentots agree
with both the Jews and the Troglodytes, being, ‘tis pretty
certain, all or most of ’em as old as the time of Abraham, which
was but 300 Years after the Flood, refer their Tradition so clearly to
Noah, as to put the matter almost out of doubt’.
- This is repeated by many authors, including MDW Jeffreys, who maintained
there were Semitic influences on Hottentot culture. All of these writers
drew the conclusion that the ancestors of the Khoi must therefore
have migrated from
elsewhere, most likely NE Africa.
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- At the same time, the notion developed that there were
‘Hamitic’ elements in the culture of herders in the S.
Angola/Namibia border regions, peoples such as the Himba and
Kwanyama/Ambo.
- Hamitic was a conflated cultural/racial category which lumped together
Cushitic/Nilotic and even Bantu peoples, such as the Tutsi, who were
deemed to have Hamitic characteristics
- Carl Meinhof‘s 1912 Die Sprachen der Hamiten provided a spurious linguistic
justification for this.
- Anthropological texts such as Loeb’s ‘In Feudal
Africa’ argued ‘early Mediterranean influence’ on the
culture of the Kwanyama
- Again the interpretation was a migration hypothesis.
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- There is no doubt that these earlier authors had observed something
imporetant, but they had no
interpretational framework to make sense of it. Correctly
understood, both archaeological and rock art evidence can be integrated
into the model.
- However, it should be said;
- Evidence for Semitic influence is zero
- Evidence that the Khoi migrated from elsewhere is Zero
- Evidence that the Bantu herders of Southern Angola migrated with their
present culture from NE Africa is zero
- There is no genetic connection between Khoesan languages and
Afroasiatic or other groups
- This paper will present some examples of potential evidence and
interpret it in the light of modern archaeological evidence
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- It has long been observed that some groups of Khwe peoples of
south-western Africa
acquired pottery, sheep and cattle within quite a short time
window (ca. 2000 BP) before attested contact with expanding Bantu-speakers.
- The pottery might be an independent invention, although this is unlikely
in Neolithic Africa, but the livestock must have been transmitted by a
pastoral people.
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- The breeds of livestock are typical of NE Africa and not associated with
those the Bantu would bring. The only credible candidate for such
transmission would be Cushitic pastoralists, although today the nearest
populations are very remote from Khoesan speakers, in central Tanzania.
However, there is every reason to think that Cushitic-speakers would
once have spread much further south in Africa, perhaps into central
Zambia, and that they were assimilated by the expanding Bantu
populations. The paper will draw together archaeological, linguistic and
rock-art evidence to propose a model for this meeting of two very
different groups in prehistory and its consequences for both.
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- Adapted from Smith (2000)
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- Rock art, Ngobe Hills, Zimbabwe
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- S. Angola longhorn cattle
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- ‘Thin-walled, fibre tempered pottery appears [in Southern Africa]
two to four centuries before the arrival of Iron Age agro-pastoralists
who were uniformly associated with thick-walled ceramics’ (Sadr
& Sampson 2006)
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- Cushitic pastoralists formerly spread down through Central Africa, at
least as far as Zambia/Northern Zimbabwe, probably intermixed with
hunter-gatherers
- They would have herded fat-tailed sheep and longhorn taurine cattle and
known how to make pottery
- Khwe speakers would have spread at least to the borders of Tanzania,
with click speakers possibly right up to Somalia
- Some time about 2000 years ago these two groups encountered one another
and the pottery skills and livestock breeds were passed between them
along with associated material culture such as mat huts, sandals and
butter-making equipment.
- A diverse pastoral culture would have existed in this intermediate zone,
observed by San hunter-gatherers who both traded with the herders and
painted their animals.
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- However, the Bantu expansion began to spread southwards and at least
from Tanzania down to Zimbabwe assimilated or incorporated the Cushitic
pastoral culture. The distinctive animal breeds became heavily crossbred
and the languages disappeared or survived only as substrates (e.g.
Ma’a)
- As the Bantu encountered the mixed Khoi-Cushites in western
Zambia/Angola a different process of cultural assimilation occurred for
reasons now unclear. Language shift to Bantu took place, but much more
of the NE African pastoral culture was retained, including features that
were lost among the Khoi, at least when encountered by the first
European incursions.
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- Hence the Namibia/Angola pastoralists (whose culture survives relatively
intact) can be more obviously identified with a Cushitic culture brought
from the Horn of Africa
- Khoi pastoral culture is known mainly from records and the sheep and
cattle have now been heavily crossbred
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