Who Are the San?
The San (also known as Bushmen, though some consider this term offensive) are the indigenous hunter-gatherer peoples of Southern Africa, representing humanity's oldest continuous cultural tradition. Numbering approximately 100,000 across Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Angola, Zimbabwe, and neighboring countries, they speak numerous languages famous for their click consonants—part of the Khoisan language family. Genetic studies show San populations carry the oldest human Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA lineages, making them representatives of humanity's ancestral population. Their rock art, some dating back 20,000+ years, represents one of the world's greatest artistic traditions.
Hunter-Gatherer Heritage
Traditional San economy was based on hunting and gathering, perfected over tens of thousands of years. Men hunted using bows with poisoned arrows—the poison derived from beetle larvae—and tracked game with extraordinary skill, reading animal signs across vast distances. Women gathered plant foods including tubers, berries, and nuts, providing the majority of daily calories. This knowledge of the environment was encyclopedic—San could survive where others would perish, finding water in the Kalahari Desert by extracting it from plants or underground. Social organization was egalitarian—no chiefs, decisions by consensus, immediate sharing of all food. This "original affluent society" worked only a few hours daily to meet subsistence needs, leaving time for storytelling, ceremony, and the profound spiritual life expressed in trance dances.
Rock Art and Spirituality
San rock art is found across Southern Africa—thousands of sites with paintings and engravings spanning millennia. This art depicts animals (especially eland), human figures, therianthropes (human-animal combinations), and abstract forms. Scholars now understand much of this art relates to shamanic trance experience. San healing dances induce altered states through rhythmic dancing, singing, and hyperventilation; healers enter trance to heal the sick and access the spirit world. The art represents visions experienced during trance—the transformation into animals, the underwater feeling of deep trance, the potency (n/um) that healers activate. This interpretation, developed with input from surviving San, reveals the art as a sophisticated spiritual record rather than simple hunting scenes.
Contemporary San
Modern San face severe challenges. Dispossessed of traditional lands by colonial settlers, then Bantu-speaking farmers, and finally modern governments and conservationists, most San can no longer practice traditional hunting and gathering. In Botswana, San were forcibly relocated from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, ostensibly for conservation but arguably to allow diamond mining. Legal battles for land rights continue. Many San live in poverty, working as farm laborers or dependent on government assistance. Alcoholism and cultural disruption are serious problems. Yet San organizations advocate for rights, cultural programs work to transmit knowledge and language, and some communities have regained limited land access. The San remind us of humanity's common heritage as hunter-gatherers and the ongoing struggle for indigenous rights in Southern Africa.
References
- Lee, R. B. (1979). The !Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society
- Lewis-Williams, J. D. (2002). The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art
- Gordon, R. J. & Sholto-Douglas, S. (2000). The Bushman Myth: The Making of a Namibian Underclass