UNESCO Ancient Civilizations of Africa (Editor G. Mokhtar)

Southern Africa: hunters and food-gatherers
by Khoi Khoi pastoralists at the Cape in the fifteenth, sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries of our era.
Should the distribution of stone age sheep-herding peoples be extended
through Zimbabwe and Zambia, the possibility arises of some origin in East
Africa where cultural, linguistic and even biological antecedents have been
postulated. The existence of herding peoples who make pottery with lugs,
the survival of 'click languages' in the Hatsa and Sandawe and the
claimed 'Hamide' features of'Hottentot' populations have all at one time or
another been quoted as evidence of a north-eastern origin for the herding,
non-iron-using populations of southern Africa. Whilst these connections
may be dubious or in some cases rejected, the continuity of traits such as
ceramics, sheep-herding, sheep and cattle types, non-iron technology,
ground stone artefacts and possibly language, if proven, would argue
strongly for an ultimate east African origin for Khoi Khoi pastoralists.
This in turn would suggest that the disruptions which caused the
movements of Bantu-speakers in a predominantly eastern wave southwards,
may also have prompted a western move, perhaps slightly earlier or simply
faster, of herding non-agriculturalist peoples towards the Cape. The
absence of 'Hottentot' or 'Cape Coastal' pottery from the Transvaal,
Swaziland, Natal, the Orange Free State or the Transkei may merely reflect
the facts that agriculture is a more feasible pursuit in these betterwatered
summer rainfall areas and that highly mobile herding peoples
without crops were more capable of spreading through the dry landscapes
of Namibia and the northern Cape and thence to the pastures of the
western and southern Cape. It is conceivable that sheep were brought along
the western route but that cattle were obtained by Khoi Khoi pastoralists
from the east, from Bantu-speaking populations by then resident in the
Transkei region. Support for this may come from the abundance of
presumed later stone age paintings of fat-tailed sheep in the western
Cape but the absence of similar paintings of cattle, although cattle
were painted in the areas now settled by Bantu-speakers. Furthermore
the presence of cattle-bones as early as sheep-bones in later stone age
excavations in the southern Cape is not yet firmly documented.
Thus, there are grounds for speculating that sheep-herding peoples,
related to stone-using hunters and distinct physically from Bantu-speakers,
having received stock and pottery from neighbours in east Africa,
migrated west and then south in search of pasture, to arrive finallyat the
Cape soon after —2000. Such populations may have incorporated, fought
with or simply learned to live with locally existing hunters and subsequently
met with and interacted with Bantu-speakers in what is today the Transkei.
The sparse distribution of pottery, ground stone artefacts and animal
bones along the route just described may mean nothing more than that
they were highly mobile, leaving debris so thinly dispersed as to be
archaeologically practically invisible.
Unfortunately, the number of undoubted herdsmen sites excavated
663