Bushmen

Bushmen: see San.

(1878) Peace settlement imposed on the Ottoman government by Russia at the end of the Russo-Turkish War. It established an independent Bulgarian principality that included most of Macedonia, realigned other European provinces of the Ottoman Empire, and ceded parts of Asian Turkey to Russia. Opposed by Austria-Hungary and Britain, it was modified at the Congress of Berlin.

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(1878) Peace settlement imposed on the Ottoman government by Russia at the end of the Russo-Turkish War. It established an independent Bulgarian principality that included most of Macedonia, realigned other European provinces of the Ottoman Empire, and ceded parts of Asian Turkey to Russia. Opposed by Austria-Hungary and Britain, it was modified at the Congress of Berlin.

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City (pop., 1992: city, 415,346; metro. area 1,522,126), capital of El Salvador. Founded near Suchitoto by the Spanish in 1525, it was moved to its present site in 1528 and declared a city in 1546. It became the capital of the country in 1839. During the late 1970s it became the focus of violence between the government and left-wing political groups. It is the country's financial, commercial, and industrial centre, producing textiles and clothing, leather goods, and wood products. It is also the site of the University of El Salvador. Devasted by earthquakes in 1854, 1873, 1917, and 1986 and by heavy floods in 1934, it has been reconstructed frequently.

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City (pop., 2001: 439,086), northwestern Honduras. It is located about 100 mi (160 km) northwest of Tegucigalpa. Founded by the Spanish in 1536, the city has been almost completely rebuilt. It is the country's chief industrial centre and second largest city; it produces a wide variety of items, including textiles, foodstuffs, clothing, beverages, and furniture.

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City (pop., 2000: 12,945), southwestern California, U.S. It is east of Los Angeles and south of Pasadena. In 1903 railroad magnate Henry E. Huntington (1850–1927) purchased the San Marino Ranch and founded the community, which was incorporated in 1913. His estate, deeded to the public, includes the Huntington Library (with rare English and American books and manuscripts), Art Gallery (where Thomas Gainsborough's Blue Boy is displayed), and Botanical Gardens.

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City (pop., 2000: metro. area, 421,958), seaport, and capital of Puerto Rico. It was visited in 1508 by Juan Ponce de León and founded in the early 16th century by the Spanish. It became heavily fortified and was a starting point for expeditions to unknown parts of the New World. Several times it was attacked by the British, including Francis Drake in 1595. In 1898, during the Spanish-American War, San Juan fell to the U.S. The city expanded rapidly in the 20th century and is one of the major ports and tourist resorts of the West Indies. Industries include petroleum and sugar refining, brewing, and distilling. San Juan is the commonwealth's financial capital and many U.S. banks and corporations maintain offices there. El Morro and San Cristóbal fortifications are among the city's historic remnants.

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Species (Aspidiotus perniciosus) of scale insect first discovered in North America at San Jose, Cal., in 1880 but probably a native of China. A waxy gray secretion (the scale) covers the yellow females, which are about 0.06 in. (1.5 mm) in diameter. The scale is elevated in the center and is surrounded by a yellow ring. The female produces several generations of living young each year. San Jose scales can completely cover tree branches and may eventually kill the tree.

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City (pop., 2000: 894,943), west-central California, U.S. Located southeast of San Francisco, San Jose was the first civic settlement in California. Founded in 1777 as a farming community, it became a Spanish military supply base and was the state's first capital (1849–52). In 1850 it became the first chartered city in California. It was a trade depot for the California gold fields. The railroad from San Francisco improved trade connections for the produce of nearby farms. San Jose is a processing and distribution centre for a rich agricultural area producing fruit and wine. It is part of Silicon Valley, and its industries include the manufacture of electronic, computer, and aerospace components, auto parts, and consumer goods.

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Segment of the Pacific Coast Ranges, southern California, U.S. Many peaks exceed 9,000 ft (2,700 m); the highest is San Antonio Peak, or Old Baldy, at 10,080 ft (3,072 m). The range also includes Mount Wilson Observatory, northeast of Pasadena. The mountains are largely within the Angeles National Forest.

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Large, nearly landlocked bay indenting west-central California, U.S. A drowned river valley paralleling the coastline, it is connected with the Pacific Ocean by the Golden Gate Strait, which is spanned by the Golden Gate Bridge. The bay is one of the world's finest natural harbours. Treasure, Yerba Buena, Angel, and Alcatraz islands are there; the cities of San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley are nearby.

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City (pop., 2000: 776,733) and port, northern California, U.S. San Francisco lies on the northern end of a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay. The Golden Gate Bridge spans the strait to the north that separates San Francisco from Marin county. Founded in the 18th century by the Spanish, it came under Mexican control after Mexican independence in 1821. Occupied by U.S. forces in 1846, it grew rapidly after the discovery of gold in nearby areas (see gold rush). San Francisco suffered extensive damage from the earthquake and fire of 1906 and from an earthquake in 1989. The city was prominent in the American cultural revolution of the 1960s. It is a commercial, cultural, educational, and financial centre and one of the country's most cosmopolitan cities.

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City (pop., 2000: 1,223,400) and port, southern California, U.S. It is located on San Diego Bay, the site of major naval and military bases. Sighted by the Spanish in 1542 and named San Miguel, the area was renamed San Diego in 1602. In 1769 the Spanish established a military post on the site, and Junípero Serra dedicated the first California mission there. The U.S. acquired it from Mexico in 1846, and a new city was laid out in 1867. The arrival of the Santa Fe railroad in 1885 stimulated the city's growth. Industrial development is dominated by aerospace, electronics, and shipbuilding, and the city is the main commercial outlet for the farm produce of southern California. Balboa Park and its San Diego Zoo are renowned, as are the area universities.

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One of the Galapagos Islands, eastern Pacific Ocean, Ecuador. It is the most populated and fertile island of the archipelago, producing sugar, coffee, cassava, and limes. Volcanic in origin and with an area of 195 sq mi (505 sq km), it is the only island of the group that has a regular supply of fresh water. Charles Darwin landed there at the settlement of San Cristóbal in 1835 and compiled data that he later used in his book On the Origin of Species (1859).

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City (pop., 2000: 185,410), southern California, U.S. Located east of Los Angeles, it was laid out as a town by Mormons in 1852 and developed as a trade centre chiefly for the surrounding citrus groves and vineyards. Other industries, including aerospace and electronics, are now the economic mainstays. It is part of the San Bernardino–Riverside–Ontario metropolitan complex.

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City (pop., 2000: 1,144,646), south-central Texas, U.S. It is situated at the headwaters of the San Antonio River. Founded in 1718 by the Spanish as a mission on the site of a Coahuiltecan Indian village, it was laid out as a town in 1731. The mission, called the Alamo, became a military post in 1794; it was the site of a historic siege in 1836. In the late 19th century, as the starting point of the Chisholm Trail, the town became a major cattle centre. Military installations, especially for aviation and aerospace, spurred the city's rapid growth after 1940. The economy is now diversified—government, business, manufacturing, education, and tourism are all important aspects of San Antonio's growth.

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formerly Bushmen

Group of peoples now living mainly in and around the Kalahari Desert region of southern Africa, chiefly Botswana, Namibia, and northwestern South Africa. They are closely related to the Khoekhoe. San languages belong to the Khoisan family. Two well-known San groups are the !Kung (Ju) and the | Gui. The San are, for the most part, physically indistinguishable from the Khoekhoe or from their Bantu-speaking neighbours. Traditional San society centres on the nomadic band of related families. San shelters are semicircular structures of branches, twigs, and grass; their equipment is portable, their possessions few and light. They have traditionally hunted, using bows and snares, and gathered wild vegetables, fruits, and nuts. Numbering in the tens of thousands, most San have been restricted, because of historical and political factors, to harsh, semiarid areas, and they work for wages on European farms or serve other Africans, notably the Tswana.

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Seaport and city (pop., 2001: 178,377), northern Spain. The city is situated at the mouth of the Urumea River on the Bay of Biscay, near the French border. First mentioned in 1014, it was chartered by Sancho the Wise of Navarra circa 1175. The town was burned in 1813 after Anglo-Portuguese troops took it from the French during the Peninsular War. Formerly the summer residence of the Spanish royal court, it is now a fashionable seaside resort. Nearby is Mount Urgull, with the 16th-century Mota Castle at its summit. Donostia–San Sebastián is the official place-name, incorporating first the Basque name and then the Spanish.

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Historic site, northeastern Florida, U.S. Established in 1924, it is the 25-acre (10-hectare) site of the oldest masonry fort in the U.S., built by the Spanish (1672–95) to protect St. Augustine. The fort played an important role in the Spanish-English struggle for the Southeast (circa 1670–1763). In the 19th century it served as a U.S. military prison.

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(born June 19, 1945, Rangoon, Burma) Opposition leader in Burma (Myanmar). Daughter of nationalist leader Aung San, she studied in Burma and India and at the University of Oxford. She lived quietly in Britain until, returning to Myanmar in 1988, she was moved by the brutality of U Ne Win's military regime to begin a nonviolent struggle for democracy and human rights. The 1990 electoral victory of her National League for Democracy was ignored by Ne Win's government, and she was held under house arrest from 1989 to 1995. She subsequently continued her opposition activities and was subject to varying degrees of government harrassment, including another period of house arrest in 2000–02. She was awarded the 1991 Nobel Prize for Peace.

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The Bushmen, San, Sho, Basarwa, ǃKung or Khwe are indigenous people of southern Africa that spans most areas of South Africa, Zimbabwe , Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia, and Angola. They were traditionally hunter-gatherers, part of the Khoisan group and are related to the traditionally pastoral Khoikhoi. Starting in the 1950s, through the 1990s, they switched to farming.

Genetic evidence suggests they are one of the oldest, if not the oldest, peoples in the world — a "genetic Adam" according to Spencer Wells, from which all humans can ultimately trace their genetic heritage.

Naming

The terms San, Khwe, Sho, Bushmen, and Basarwa have all been used to refer to hunter-gatherer peoples of southern Africa. Each of these terms has a problematic history, as they have been used by outsiders to refer to them, often with pejorative connotations. The individual groups identify by names such as Juǀʼhoansi and ǃKung (the punctuation characters representing different clicks), and most call themselves "Bushmen" when referring to themselves collectively.

The term "San" was historically applied by their ethnic relatives and historic rivals, the Khoikhoi. This term means "outsider" in the Nama language and was derogatory because it distinguished the Bushmen from what the Khoikhoi called themselves, namely the First People. Western anthropologists adopted "San" extensively in the 1970s, where it remains preferred in academic circles. The term "Bushmen" is widely used, but opinions vary on whether it is appropriate – given that the term is sometimes viewed as pejorative.

In South Africa, the term "San" has become favored in official contexts, being included in the blazon of the new national coat-of-arms. In South Africa "Bushman" is considered derogatory by some groups. Angola does not have an official term for Bushmen, but they are sometimes referred to as Bushmen, Kwankhala, or Bosquímanos (the Portuguese term for Bushmen). In Lesotho they're referred to as Baroa, which is where the Sesotho name for "South", "Boroa", comes from. Neither Zambia nor Zimbabwe have official terms, although in the latter case the terms Amasili and Batwa are sometimes used. In Botswana, the officially used term is Basarwa, where it is partially acceptable to some Bushmen groups, although Basarwa, a Tswana language label, also has negative connotations. The term is a class 2 noun (as indicated by the "ba-" class marker), while an older class 6 variant, "Masarwa," is now almost universally considered offensive.

Ancestral land conflict with Botswana government

Since the mid-1990s the central government of Botswana has implemented a relocation policy, aiming to move the Bushmen out of their ancestral land on the Central Kalahari Game Reserve into newly created settlements. Although the government categorically deny that relocation has been forced, a recent court ruling confirmed that the removal was unconstitutional and residents were forcibly removed.

The government's official reasons for adopting the policy is: "Over time it has become clear that many residents of the CKGR already were or wished to become settled agriculturists, raising crops and tending livestock as opposed to hunting-gathering when the reserve was established in 1961.

In fact, hunting-gathering had become obsolete to sustain their living conditions. These agricultural land uses are not compatible with preserving wildlife resources and not sustainable to be practiced in the Game Reserve.

This is the fundamental reason for government to relocate the CKGR residents."

Opponents to the relocation policy claim that the government's intent is to clear the area – an area the size of Denmark – for the lucrative tourist trade and for diamond mining. This is strenuously denied on the government's official web site, stating that although exploration had taken place, it concluded that mining activity would not be viable and that the issue was not related to the relocation policy.

It is further claimed that the group as a whole has little voice in the national political process and is not one of the tribal groups recognized in the constitution of Botswana. Over the generations, the Bushmen of South Africa have continued to be absorbed into the African population, particularly the Griqua sub-group, which is an Afrikaans-speaking people of predominantly Khoisan that has certain unique cultural markers that set them apart from the rest of the Africans.

Court decision

On December 13, 2006, the Bushmen won a historic ruling in their long-running court case against the government. By a 2-1 majority, the court said the refusal to allow the Basarwa into the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) without a permit was "unlawful and unconstitutional." It also said the state's refusal to issue special game licenses to allow the Bushmen to hunt was "unlawful" and "unconstitutional" and found that the Bushmen were "forcibly and wrongly deprived of their possessions" by the government. However, the court did not compel the government to provide services such as water to any Bushmen who returned to the reserve. More than one thousand Bushmen intend to return to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, one of Africa's largest protected nature reserves. However, only limited number of Bushmen have been allowed to return to this land. In April 2008, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) criticised Botswana's government for not allowing certain Bushmen to return.

Society

The Bushman kinship system reflects their interdependence as traditionally small, mobile foraging bands. Also, the kinship system is comparable to the Eskimo kinship system, with the same set of terms as in Western countries, and also employ a name rule and an age rule. The age rule resolves any confusion arising around kinship terms, because the older of two people always decides what to call the younger. Since relatively few names circulate approximately only 35 names per gender, and each child is named for a grandparent or other relative, Bushmen are guaranteed an enormous family group with whom they are welcome to travel.

Traditional gathering gear is simple and effective: a hide sling, blanket, and cloak called a kaross to carry foodstuffs, firewood, smaller bags, a digging stick, and perhaps a smaller version of the kaross to carry a baby. Women would gather, and men hunted using poison arrows and spears in laborious days-long excursions. Children had no duties besides to play, and leisure was very important to the Bushmen. They spent large amounts of time with conversation, joking around, music, and sacred dances.

Villages ranged in sturdiness from nightly rain shelters in the warm spring, when people moved constantly in search of budding greens, to formalized rings when they congregated in the dry season around the only permanent waterholes. Early spring, a hot dry period following a cool dry winter, was the hardest season, after autumn nuts were exhausted, villages concentrated around waterholes, and most plants were dead or dormant. Meat was most important in the dry months, when wildlife could never range far from receding waters.

Traditionally the San were an egalitarian society. Although they did have hereditary chiefs, the chief’s authority was limited and the bushmen instead made decisions among themselves, on a consensus basis. Women's status was relatively equal. Women did not begin bearing children until about 18 or 19 years of age due to late first menstruation because of the low fat diet and had them spaced four years apart, due to lack of enough breast milk to feed more than one child at a time , and the requirements of mobility leading to the difficulty of carrying more than one child at a time.

Children were very well behaved and treated kindly by their parents and group. Children spent much of the day playing with each other and are not segregated by sex, neither sex is trained to be submissive or fierce, and neither sex is restrained from expressing the full breadth of emotion that seems inherent in the human spirit" .

The San economy was a gift economy, based on giving each other gifts on a regular basis rather than on trading or purchasing goods and services .

Early history

Bushmen had an advanced early culture evidenced by archaeological data. For example, Bushmen from the Botswana region migrated south to the Waterberg Massif in the era 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. They left rock paintings at the Lapala Wilderness area and Goudriver recording their life and times, including characterizations of rhinoceros, elephant and a variety of antelope species (resembling impala, kudu and eland, all present day inhabitants).

Around AD 1,000 Bantu tribes began to expand into bushman occupied areas and pushed the bushmen into more inhospitable areas such as the Kalahari desert.

In the media

The Bushmen of the Kalahari were first brought to the Western world's attention in the 1950s by South African author Laurens van der Post with the famous book The Lost World of the Kalahari, which was also a BBC TV series.

The 1980 comedy movie The Gods Must Be Crazy portrays a Kalahari Bushman tribe's first encounter with an artifact from the outside world (a Coke bottle). In 1969, the director of this movie, Jamie Uys, had directed Lost in the Desert, in which a small boy stranded in the desert encounters a group of wandering Bushmen before, and is helped by them and then abandoned due to a misunderstanding created by the lack of a common language and culture.

John Marshall documented the lives of Bushmen in the Nyaer Nyaer region of Namibia over more than a 50-year period. His early film The Hunters, released in 1957, shows a giraffe hunt during the 1950s. N!!Ai: The Story of a !Kung Woman (1980) is the account of a woman who grew up while the Bushmen were living as autonomous hunter-gatherers and was later forced into a dependent life in the government created community at Tsumkwe. A Kalahari Family (2002) is a five-part, six-hour series documenting 50 years in the lives of the Juǀʼhrtoansi of Southern Africa, from 1951 to 2000. Marshall was a fierce and vocal proponent of the Bushman cause throughout his life, which was, in part, due to strong kinship ties, and had a Bushman wife in his early 20s.

In Wilbur Smith's The Burning Shores, the San people are portrayed through two major characters, O'wa and H'ani, and the Bushmen's struggles, history and beliefs are touched upon in great detail. The Burning Shores is a volume in the Courtney's of Africa series.

PBS's series How Art Made the World compares San cave painting 200 years ago to Paleolithic European painting 14,000 years old. Because of their similarities, the San can help us understand the reasons for ancient cave paintings. Lewis Williams believes that their trance states (traveling to the spirit world) are directly related to the reasons people went deep into caves, experienced sensory deprivation, and painted their visions onto the cave walls.

Spencer Wells' 2003 book The Journey of Man—in connection with National Geographic's Genographic Project—discusses a genetic analysis of the San and asserts their blood contains the oldest genetic markers found on earth, making the Bushmen humankind's "genetic Adam". These genetic markers are present on the y chromosome and are therefore passed down through thousands of generations in a relatively pure form. The documentary continues to trace these markers throughout the world, demonstrating that all of humankind can be traced back to the African continent and that the San are the last, most genetically unadulterated, remnant of humankind's ancient ancestors.

However, more recent analysis suggests that the San may have been merely isolated from other original ancestral groups and then rejoined at a later date, re-mixing the human gene pool.

In 2007, author David Gilman published his book "The Devil's Breath", a novel partly based upon the bushmen. One of the main characters !Koga, a small bushman boy helps Max Gordon, the main character to travel across Namibia, using traditional bushman methods to do so.

Notables

• Nǃxau starred in several films based on and including The Gods Must Be Crazy.
• The "negro of Banyoles", a controversial piece of taxidermy, was a bushman.

See also

• San Religion
• Central Kalahari Game Reserve
• Xhoba (Hoodia gordonii)

Notes

References

• Elizabeth Marshall Thomas (2006). The Old Way: A Story of the First People.
• Marjorie Shostak (1983). Nisa: The Life and Words of a ǃKung Woman. New York: Vintage Books.
• Nancy Howell. (1979). Demography of the Dobe ǃKung. New York: Academic Press.
• Richard Lee and Irven DeVore (1999). Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers: Studies of the ǃKung San & Their Neighbors. iUniverse.
• Robert J. Gordon (1999). The Bushman Myth: The Making of a Namibian Underclass. ISBN 0813335817.

External links

• Official Botswana Government Website
• Survival International
• National Geographic
• Bleek and Lloyd Archive of |xam and !kun texts online
• Specimens of Bushmen folklore - tales collected by Bleek and Lloyd
• The San Trickster God meets the Ideology of the West: Exploring the Implications of Interpretation among San and European Relations in Southern Africa
• The myth of ritual origins? Ethnography, mythology and interpretation of San rock art by Dr Anne Solomon (South African Archaeological Bulletin, June 1997)
• The Kalahari Peoples Fund
• Scientific American - Offerings to a Stone Snake Provide the Earliest Evidence of Religion by J. R. Minkel 01/12/06
• Les bushmen, a documentary film about Bushmen (in French), from YouTube
• video of persistence hunting
• The Kuru Family of Organizations
• Sos bushmen: everything about the Bushmen. In several languages
• The San Bushmen of southern Africa
• Khwattu - South African based centre for preservation of the original SAN culture
• Photo gallery of Bushmen in Botswana