UNESCO Ancient Civilizations of Africa (Editor G. Mokhtar)

Ancient Civilizations of Africa
of foods and which required little supplementing. It seems that, by carefully
planning an annual beat around the available resources and conserving
the more common foods for difficult times, the need to store food was
minimized. Food was usually collected and consumed the same day, or over
a few days in the case of unusual bounties such as large game. The situation
farther south seems to have been similar, since evidence of storage
pits is rare in the archaeological record and the early travellers never
describe storage as an important aspect of San subsistence. Kolb, who had
access to the information of many observers of Khoi Khoi and San life
at the end of the seventeenth century, noted that 'though the fields
abound with wholesome and very nourishing fruits and roots which they
might lay up in plenty against a rainy day, yet it is the custom of the women
to ... gather only such a quantity ... as will serve their families for the
day'. 74 Other early authorities mention the storing of dried grasshoppers,
the pounded roots of the canna plant (a species of Salsola) and dried
apricots, items which were probably not as economically important as the
roots, tubers and corms. In the southern Cape there is evidence, as yet
unpublished, of large numbers of storage pits associated with San cave
sites. 75 As yet unconfirmed reports suggest that the seeds recovered from
these pits may have been collected for their oil content rather than as food.
From the evidence that has been presented, it seems clear that San
groups were highly organized small mobile groups with an intimate
knowledge of the resources available to them and how these resources varied
through time and space. The subsistence base, the range of hunting, fishing
and gathering techniques and the settlement patterns employed are
becoming increasingly better documented, using data from a variety of
sources. As Lee has pointed out, the impression that hunter-gatherers
subsisted on the brink of disaster has been shown to be generally far from
the truth. An old woman (it is not known whether she was Khoi Khoi
or San) was questioned by Barrow in the Bokkeveld in 1798, of which he
said:
on being asked if her memory could carry her back to the time when
the Christians first came among them, she replied, with a shake of her
head, that she had very strong reasons to remember it, for that before
she had ever heard of the Christians, she knew not the want of a bellyful,
whereas it was now a difficult matter to get a mouthful. 76
Khoi Khoi pastoralists
The picture of hunting and gathering within defined environmental
contexts is, of course, seriously incomplete when dealing with the
74. I. Schapera, 1933, p. 205.
75. H. J. Deacon, personal communication.
76. J. Barrow, pp. 398-9.
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