The epic journey of an African Bushman, in the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy, starts when a Coke bottle falls from an airplane in the sky and lands in front of him. He has never seen a glass bottle before, and he takes it back to his tribe where they admire it. As they find more and more uses for the bottle, they begin to view it as a necessity. New emotions like jealousy, hate, and anger surface as conflict between members of the tribe as each tries to use the bottle for his own purpose. One member of the tribe decides that enough is enough, and that the bottle must be returned to the gods who sent it. His fictional journey illustrates the differences between the modern fast paced world and the more relaxed hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
The Bushmen who live in the South African Kalahari Desert are members of an ethnic group known as the Khoisan, and are the remnants of two tribes of people. The San were an ancient tribe of hunter-gatherers and the Khoi Khoi who were a tribe of pastoralists. Both tribes are known for their unusual languages that involve using a series of clicks for some consonants. This language family is confined primarily to South Africa, although there are some speakers of the language in Tanzania. Jared Diamond, in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, suggested that the Khoisan may originally have been more widespread across Sub-Saharan Africa. Archeologists believe they have lived in this area for over 20,000 years, and they may be one of the oldest peoples in the world. Discoveries of San rock art in the Drakensberg Mountains of South Africa depict their food sources (the eland antelope), their beliefs in the supernatural world, and their history painted on sandstone.
The history of these people is a microcosm of the broader picture of world history, where each geographic area has seen a succession of people displacing, conquering, or killing previous inhabitants. The name San literally means “those without cattle.” They were the original inhabitants of southern Africa who mixed with the Khoi Khoi from the north. The Khoi Khoi had been in contact with the Bantu people from whom they acquired cattle. The Khoi Khoi and the San eventually mixed and became the dominant ethnic group in southern Africa. The Bantu migration from western Africa into and across southern Africa between 3,000 BCE and 500 CE brought agriculture and iron technology that would serve to marginalize the Khoisan people. Later, the Europeans, with their sophisticated technology and aggressive colonial governments, dominated the region from the 17th century onwards. The Khoisan peoples have been able to survive through many generations and into the present day because they live in remote areas (such as the Kalahari desert) that are unsuitable for farming. This hunting and gathering society can give us a small idea of what life was like before humans became sedentary.
I watched a clip of this movie a few years ago in a history class. The websites were helpful. I like the San rock art. It definitely reveals the aspects of their culture. They mentioned as well that they used the rock art to try to control the rain and other weather for agricultural purposes. In addition, they said that the Bushman enjoyed leisure time as a hunter-gather society, which we discussed in class. Also, women had an important role in the hunting and gathering. So, they are a typical hunter-gather society.
ReplyDeleteI have never seen this before, thanks so much for sharing. The pop bottle was almost like a creator of problems. It was amazing to see how something we take fro granted created so many things for someone else. I was surprised how involved women were in the society. The women were actually saw as important members of the clan.
ReplyDeleteWe just finished a chapter on phonemes in my linguistics class, and discussed the clicking languages. Phonemes are the basic sounds that make up languages, and all the speakers of a language recognize them as unique. There's a script called the International Phonetic Alphabet that contains symbols for every known phoneme in the world, and the clicks are represented in it. It'd be interesting to learn how to write them and speak the language, I think.
ReplyDeleteThe Coke bottle story at the beginning was a great opening to the rest of your blog. Like you said in your comment, the idea that something we don't pay attention to anymore caused so much havoc to this tribe is just unimaginable.
ReplyDeleteTwo years ago in my Spanish class at GRCC, I had a classmate that just moved back to the states from Africa. She had been living there as a translator and knew many of the different languages and dialects. I don't remember any of the actual dialects, but she would sometimes speak them and the "clicking" sounds that you mention are amazing to hear first-hand. And to imagine that these are words to someone, and not just sounds like they are to us! Amazing!