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2	The origin of the ‘Hottentots’ 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.
3	‘Hamitic’ elements in the culture of the Angolan Bantu herders 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.
4	Do these observations have some validity or is this just racist nonsense? 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
5	Cultural developments among the Khwe 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.
6	Cultural developments among the Khwe II 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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8	Selected dates for Southern African livestock Adapted from Smith (2000)
9	Sheep terms in Central Khoesan
10	Sheep Damara sheep
11	Sheep Somali sheep
12	Cultural developments among the Khwe peoples III: sheep Rock art, Ngobe Hills, Zimbabwe
13	Cattle terms in Central Khoesan
14	Cattle breeds S. Angola longhorn cattle
15	Cattle breeds Uganda Sanga cow
16	Material culture: pottery ‘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)
17	Material culture: tents Nama mat house
18	Material culture II Butter-making S. Angola
19	How can we interpret this? 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.
20	How can we interpret this? II 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.
21	How can we interpret this? III 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
22	Khoi herders on the move, ca. 1700
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