Who Are The San Bushmen? | The World's Oldest People

this video is brought to you by curiosity stream more on that later imagine a society in which the workweek seldom exceeds 19 hours material wealth is considered a burden and no one is much richer than anyone else food is abundant the people are comfortable peaceful happy and secure this is a quote from a 1969 time article it isn't about some Cold War era fictional future society or some Marxist utopia it's about hunter-gatherers living in the Kalahari a people whose history is full of surprises and misconceptions some people call them the Bushmen the unsub has called them Bushmen others SAN these and now some call them the most successful civilization in human history so who are these San Bushmen of the Kalahari what can they tell us about civilization itself and what does it all have to do with Snoop Dogg well let's find out when the Dutch began colonizing southern Africa in 1652 they encountered two groups of people that spoke odd clicking languages these two kinds of click speakers were cattle herders called Khoikhoi and hunter-gatherers at the Khoikhoi called san which is a derogatory word for someone that picks things up from the ground these two types of names combined form the name of the main click language family choice on the Doge called the Khoikhoi hottentots which sounds like a brand of microwavable potatoes but instead means stutterers and they call the San Bushmen these were not nice names to make things even harder the San have never been a unified group each SAN group has its own name for itself like Jaquan see if you had to call them anything they will prefer you just call them by their group's name Bushman is the common name at the moment but in recent years san has become especially popular in academic circles I'll use San in this video because the term seems to be on its way to becoming in the dominant one but both are fine one of the most famous traits of the Sun is the clicks to use when speaking famous click languages like pasa actually borrowed their clicks from the Sun electronically the Khoisan languages are some of the most complex in the world the clicks are represented in our alphabet with symbols such as and like in the name kun also it's best to us assume that I'm doing the click sounds wrong because I definitely am genetic analysis has revealed that the Sun are one of if not the oldest people on earth a 2016 DNA study of the San showed that the ancestors of today's fan began to diverge from other human populations in Africa around 150,000 years ago humans have only been around for about 200,000 years the Sun stayed in southern Africa while the others moved out across the planet the Sun have remained a distinct ethnic group since then today there are rough 100,000 sand people they've traditionally lived in and near the 900,000 square kilometer Kalahari Desert of Namibia and Botswana this is a seemingly endless dry Bush desert it's monotonous Plains hot and scorching this is the land of thirst earth parched animals hide from the Sun under the few trees available and drought is common for the last 150 thousand years the sand have lived here as hunter-gatherers to survive here the sand had to learn everything they could about their environment they catalogued more than 100 species of plants and learned which were edible which were medicinal and which will kill you an apologist Richard biele went to study the sand in 1963 his study of the San was conducted during one of Southern Africa's worst droughts in Botswana 180,000 people were being kept alive by United Nations famine relief but the San whose diet Lee examined during this period incredibly 8 mm 140 calories and 93.1 grams of protein each per day eight point three percent more calories and 55 percent more protein than their recommended daily allowance in sand society women gathered and men hunted interestingly 70 percent of the sand diet was made up of plants that had been gathered over all women supplied two to three times more food than the men the sad to find gender roles very clearly but they made it clear that gender was no means to claim authority over anyone anthropologist James Suzman who spent 25 years living with the san saw that if sand couples married and one turned out to be violent disloyal or simply annoying then a divorce could easily be carried out without much social stigma this gender equality amongst the san made sense for practical reasons men and women both played important roles in providing food so was obvious they were making decisions about when and where to camp when to hunt when to gather when to have bay he's both men and women should have a say in the decision most of this information was presented by Lee at the 1966 symposium man the hunter which considering who provided the most food is pretty funny this symposium questioned the belief that hunter-gatherer life was nasty brutish and short because the Sun knew their environment so well they happily survived in the same way for tens of thousands of years without fail gathering provided the bulk of their diet and hunting provided their favorite food meat but at first glance their hunting tools don't seem too impressive if you look at a sound bow and arrow you'd think he could barely kill a squirrel with it and you'd be right and if you look at the size of the animals the sand traditionally hunted kudu giraffes wildebeests they aren't small animals why didn't the Sam invent larger more powerful weapons well they didn't need to they had a secret weapon poison we have evidence from border cave in South Africa that shows ricin based poisons of the sand rubbed on their arrows which is about 25,000 years old poison doesn't really preserve like rocks or bones so this find is incredibly lucky and the sand were probably using poison long before but for at least twenty five thousand years all a SAN hunter have to do to guarantee a kill was get his arrow to hit his prey anywhere on the body work smarter not harder as soon as an arrow hit its mark the weak shaft separates from the tiny arrow head stuck in the animal then all the hunter has to do is wait for the poison to finish the job for him creating a poison that can kill a large animal without turning the meat toxic is an impressive feat of chemistry one that probably took a lot of fatal trial and error some sand groups use castor beans to make poison others use plants but the sand of the central and northern Kalahari found a a pure source they gathered the tiny larvae the DM philia beetle the sand then carefully rolled the larvae between their fingers softening them up and then they popped off the heads and squeezed out their toxic sides on to their arrows no one were cuts or scrapes is allowed to take part in this process because there is no antidote for D Nvidia poison you can kill a mouse with just 25 trillions of a gram of this poison and with this ingenious concoction combined with an ultra-light bow and arrow the san could hunt with ease The Sands tracking skills are just as important as their poison arrows in the endless Kalahari it's essential to be able to track your prey over long distances San hunters could tell the weight and amount of fat on an animal by looking at its tracks alone they could tell an individual tracks apart from the rest of the herd by looking at scuffs on rocks and recently trampled grass de curtail the direction of a fleeing animal gossip spread quickly in San camps because people recognized each of those footprints and knew who was coming and going from where and when once a hunter had hit their prey with an arrow they would simply memorize its tracks and let the poison do its job then in a couple of hours or the next day they'd just follow their tracks and pick up the meal return the camp with their kill hunters would need fake skin because back at camp everyone would insult the meat referring to it as tiny are barely even worth the effort of hunting the hunters weren't supposed to be hurt by these fake insults they normally smile as they were dished out and just continued to distribute the meat equally to everyone this was an act that every sand and knew well and has served a vital purpose it kept egos in check if you read Richard Lee study on the sand he gets super offended when they start making fun of an ox he bought them for Christmas in frustration he asked why they keep calling the fat ox II bought skinny and worthless and a Sandman called Tamas a response when a young man kills much meat he comes to think of himself as a chief or a big man and he thinks the rest of us as his servants or inferiors we cannot accept this so we always speak of his meat as worthless this way we cool his heart and make him gentle thus an understood letting anyone rise to the top of the social ladder led to problems everyone in the camp was on equal footing and if some started thinking too much of themselves thus and made sure to ridicule them this fears equality that the sand practiced helped them become the most stable population in human history genetic evidence suggests that up until 20,000 years ago they were probably the most populous group of humans on earth they remain the most genetically diverse this genetic diversity means that they have suffered a fewer population bottlenecks than other peoples that migrated out of africa bottlenecks like war famine and disease the rest of humanity has lost over half its genetic diversity in the last 150 thousand years thus an traditionally lived in small family groups that constantly moved around the Kalahari but during the winter some groups would meet up to form large social groups these meetings were a great time for the sand to engage in their favor activity gift-giving moe-san had haqq sorrow or generosity partnerships all hex ro partners would frequently give each other gifts to reaffirm friendships gifts were always reciprocated but never right away traditionally the most popular gift items were ostrich egg shell jewelry and hunting tools although some Sun when gifted an educational youtube video would immediately respond by liking sharing and subscribing to that sands channel such a beautiful concept the sands ostrich egg shell jewelry is one of their most famous artistic creations other sign heart includes some of the thousands of drawings at the Tissot Dillo hills going back thousands of years and in recent years some son have become accomplished artists they also create a lot of music which has a really nice beat to it here's a quick sample let's take a break learning about deadly poison awesome hunters and ancient history and instead take a look at something much much sexier early 20th century British economists john maynard keynes in his 1930s a economic possibilities of our grandchildren predicted that by 2030 advances in productivity and technology would give us a high quality of life while only working about 15 hours a week Keynes was right about productivity offices are 84 percent more productive now than they were in 1970 and farms are 46 percent more productive but Keynes was wrong about the 15 hour work week he didn't consider our ability to consume and come up with new unnecessary work like what even is a front-facing customer satisfaction operator what is my purpose a full workday in 1970 can now be completed in an hour and a half but we still work eight-hour days for some reason Keynes thought technology will bring leisure I wonder what he would have thought if he knew about the Sun who have been working less than 15 hours a week for over 100,000 years gathering food is the SANS top priority but according to Lee in all the adults of the Dobby camp worked about two-and-a-half days a week since the average working day was worth six hours the fact emerges that the Gong Bushmen of Dobby despite the harsh environment the vote from 12 to 19 hours a week to getting food this 12 to 19 hour workweek Nanded thus an about 2,000 140 calories per day now these studies are fascinating but he did make some mistakes for example his work week did not take into account health work - just cleaning our childcare this would bring the SANS total up to about 40 hours compared to our 80 hours when hoaxes work is counted based on Lee studies anthropologist Marshall Sahlins dubbed the San the original affluent society for Cylons there were two possible courses to affluence once may be satisfied either by producing more or desiring little we should imagine the empirical possibility that hunt are in the business for their health define an objective and that the bow and arrow are adequate to that end most of us in the first world live relatively luxurious lives thanks to productivity and technology but science has made it clear that our desire to consume more has pushed our planet to its limits it does not have the infinite resources to match our infinite objectives now our productivity risks eating our future but most solutions seem to be based around finding a way to sustainably continue to mass produce rather than finding a way to desire less so what caused us to live in a world that seems to need constant expansion production and consumption to survive while the Sun could be happy with what they have some sort of witch's curse a deal with the devil no this is something much much more sinister farmers you see farming is more productive than hunting and gathering but it requires a lot of work you have to clear the fields chop down forests irrigate soils play all the fields build fences construct a hoe and plant and maintain crops we know from examining early farmer skeletons that they suffer from malnutrition bad teeth and horrific work injuries farming was supposed to have let us settle down beginning around 10,000 BC and start doing capital C civilization which led to city-states Coliseum's and pyramids and great walls and social hierarchies Kings priests mass-production and of course civilizations sexiest are tax collectors but what this narrative is wrong wall of tax collectors are not as sexy as they first appear in his book against the grain James II Scot argues that agriculture is fugly and the no one even likes her he notes that just about every major infectious disease that threatens humans popped up with cities cholera smallpox measles influenza chicken pox and perhaps malaria war genocide slavery stepping on Legos all benefits of civilization hunter-gatherers are also much less likely to suffer from famine than farmers comparisons of the skeletons of Europe's early farmers with those of Europe's hunter-gatherers shows that farming did not spread to Europe because hunter-gatherers saw how much cooler farming was and decided to join in its spread because the farmers killed all the hunter-gatherers with their nifty armies that's what happened in ancient Europe and it's what kind of happened to the sand the sad weren't isolated from civilization for all of history about 5,000 years ago agriculture of birth the African Bantu civilization who proceeded to expand air in Africa the crops sheep and cattle over the course of thousands of years they crushed the hunter-gatherer populations they found along the way but deserts were natural barriers to them because you can't really firm there and cows just won't eat sand for some reason the sand of the Kalahari were protected by the hostile desert home but then Europeans arrived between the Dutch setting up their colony at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652 and the takeover of the colony by the British in 1806 the Khoisan inhabitants of South Africa essentially wiped out and the survivors were forced to work on settler farms the sand to the north began attacking farms and killing livestock the settlers continued to try and push north with their horses and rifles the San people were easily startled by the colonists but soon came back and in greater numbers this strategy seemed to work for them and they managed to stall the settlers from moving further north something that surprised the European colonists was that the sand were important to traders in the region and had been trading animal skins ivory jewelery and oddly enough mining and shipping copper across the desert to their Bantu neighbors thus an settler stalemate was broken in 1884 when Germany claimed modern-day Namibia as a colony german south-west africa settlers homely for diamonds ivory and farmland poured into San and other native peoples like the Herero and nama Stara tree water pumps could now turn the Kalahari into farmland Germany seized control of the land they rammed the ramparts they took over the airports and committed the first genocide of the 20th century settlers moving into San Territory to farm needed laborers the San who the settlers had just played a game of hippity-hoppity our land is my property with seemed like a pretty good source of Labor the Sood Vestas item a newspaper from the 25th of November at 1908 reported patrols were rounding up san and sending them off to work in mines and farms the settlers thought that the solution to their Bushman problem was to educate them through hard labour would have focused on the children the youngsters can be made to work but only if the children are taken away from their parents which in these cases can be done without much ado the Germans would eventually lose their colony to the South Africans after World War one but the story of the sand under the South Africans was the same as it was under the Germans in the 1940s onward the San and Southwest Africa a newly independent Botswana removed from the native lands banned from hunting and pushed onto farms only a small section of nine I in South West Africa and the central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana remained where the sand could hunt and gather in relative peace the overwhelming majority of the sand had become South West Africa's Botswana's and South Africa's supply of cheap labour during the 1960's anger towards the apartheid government and South Africa's continued rule of Southwest Africa despite the UN's objections led to a revolution for the South West Africans people organization or SWAPO this kicked off the south african border war the war became another Cold War battleground with the Soviets and Cubans supporting SWAPO and the United States and other Western powers supporting South Africa the South African military create a Bushmen unit specializing in tracking and reconnaissance the Bushmen unit soon gained legendary status due to their effectiveness in this guerrilla war the South African military took over nine-nine in 1978 and set up a base there in its largest city to skunk way I know I said that wrong I just can't say it right within a few years almost every sound male in nine I was a soldier the Sam became the most militarized ethnic group on earth then the southern end of the Cold War sucked all life from the conflict sailed west africa became namibia in 1990 when the south africans left in the sands military salary with them Naiya is now one of the only places left on earth where the sand can continue to hunt and gather but then the Midian 9i reserve isn't large enough to support their traditional way of life now they depend on government support in Botswana the government evicted the sand from the central Kalahari Game Reserve in the 1990s and it probably it probably had nothing to do with the massive amounts of diamonds discovered like right in the reserve today the sand and no longer survive only by hunting and gathering the majority of modern SAN live as rural poor the romantic image of sand hunters unaware of the modern world is a myth the Sun as we can see from their history and maybe more than any other living people aware of the world around them and what it can do to them but the traditional culture of the San is still clinging on the San removed from the central Kalahari Game Reserve fought their government in Botswana's longest court case during which thus an advocacy group the first peoples of the Kalahari and survival international wrote the greatest appeal for help of all time we appeal to our black brothers and sisters in the hip-hop industry to Russell Simmons Snoop Dogg Ludacris and all other musicians that are household names to help us we know you love our diamonds if you are going to wear stones then at least help us pressure our government into letting us go home please don't let us perish for your bling they won the court case in 2006 their removal was deemed illegal but since then they have still not really been allowed to return and are still fighting the San are still Southern Africa's poorest people but recent years have been filled with possibilities and hope the 99 Conservancy established in 1998 has given the Sun greater control over their land the Conservancy sustainably manages the resources and wildlife of nain and has even encouraged some investment which is used to support the Conservancy and the sand in 9i poaching and over-exploitation is now rare in 99 thanks to the San and their Conservancy and have been involved in work with film companies that pay the Conservancy to fill in 9i other cooperative efforts like this have been set up by San in recent years the San since the 1960's have provided us with so many fascinating questions has the human story been one of constant progress or do hunter-gatherers still have a lot to teach us is the need to consume and produce part of being human or is an artifact of the agricultural revolution is capital C civilization objectively good is success measured by sustainability or wealth vines climbed over the ruins of Rome sand cover the Sphinx jungles reclaimed that the city of the omics but the San are still here will we be able to say the same thing about our civilization in a few hundred or thousand years I'm not saying that I would like to leave my heated fast broadband and frozen burritos to go and live in the Kalahari but I think it's fascinating that studying a people living in a different way can provide you with so many interesting questions why that our ancestors abandoned their nomadic life and take up a civilization Professor Jonathan Merkley attempted to answer this question and even went further back than the sand 150,000 years ago in his documentary deep time history he covers a human story from the Big Bang true to the Industrial Revolution if you like this video you'll love deep time history which you can watch over on curiosity stream a subscription service made for people that love to learn they have thousands of documentaries featuring top names like David Attenborough and Stephen Hawking including exclusive originals you'll get unlimited access starting at just $2.99 a month and the first 31 days are completely free if you sign up over a curiosity stream forward slash cogito and use the promo code cogito during the signup process but even more curiosity stream has partnered with nebula a video streaming service I'm helping to build with a bunch of my fellow YouTube grown education creators using my code you'll get nebula included with your curiosity stream subscription at no extra cost to you nebula has brilliant originals like grand theft auto from second thought and real-life floor or the addictive led zeppelin's epics by polyphonic along with a bunch of great new and upcoming originals from your other favorite creators so if you go over to curiosity stream slash cogito you'll get thousands of high-quality documentaries and you'll be helping to support educational creators without watching programmatic ads it's incredible that curiosity stream is supporting learning with this deal so head over on to curiosity stream for slash cogito and get access to curiosity stream and nebula today this video has been a part of Project Africa a huge collaboration between history youtubers about African history the playlist with all of the videos featured is linked down below and all of them are incredible I'd recommend you go check out the video before mine by the cynical historian on how Guns Germs and Steel got Africa wrong or you could go forward in time and check out our KS his video on the phoenicians also how dare you even assume that I forgot to record this outro and uh now desperately going back in a rush to record it again in a different setup which is why it might sound different than the rest of the entire video but honestly how dare you even assume that so that's the story of the sand or at least what I could fit into one long video it isn't even close to covering everything one video simply can't do it but learning about these fascinating people has been fun and I hope you enjoyed it if you like this kind of content please subscribe and hit the notification bell and if you like to support the channel then you can go and join my potato army over on patreon or purchase some merch which is linked below all of the sources used are also linked down below thank you so much for watching [Music]

Channel: Cogito

Views: 513,727

Rating: 4.9083982 out of 5

Keywords: who are the !kung people, who are the San people, who are the san bushmen, who are the bushmen, who are the bushmen of the kalahari, bushmen, kalahari, africa, who are the bushmen tribe, namibia, who are the san of namibia, project africa, San Bushmen, san bushmen click language, san bushmen of the kalahari desert in africa, san bushmen documentary, kalahari bushmen, kalahari bushmen documentary, kalahari bushmen language, kalahari bushmen movie, the bushmen of the kalahari, !kung

Id: 1oQ5Jd7p2aY

Length: 27min 7sec (1627 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 26 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/aral_sea_was_here]

I'd like to point out that there's no "oldest people" per se. The better way of putting it would be that they are the most conservative or most unchanged - something lile that. And even that is still theoretical