UNESCO Ancient Civilizations of Africa (Editor G. Mokhtar)

Southern Africa: hunters and food-gatherers
FIG. 26.12 A group ofsmall stock raiders armed with bows and arrows defending their booty
against largerfigures carrying shields and spears. The distinction presumably reflects that between
San hunters and Negro cattle owners, in the central and eastern districts of southern Africa
likely that the introduction of herding into southern Africa would have
involved both population movements and the assimilation of indigenous
hunter-gatherers, as
Elphick suggests, but the documentation of both
processes remain a difficult archaeological exercise.
Relations between San, Khoi Khoi and other groups such as immi¬
grant colonists or iron-using agriculturalists were probably as varied as
those between San and Khoi Khoi. In the west both San and Khoi Khoi
were driven from their lands and exterminated or assimilated into colonial
society. A number of rock paintings from the western Cape depict the
covered
waggons, mounted horsemen and weapons of the trekking
farmers (see Fig. 26.11). In the east the conflict between iron age farmers
and hunters is largely undocumented but again rock paintings depict cattle
thefts in which small bowmen steal from larger figures with spears and
shields (see Fig. 26.12). The later stages of this interaction are recorded
when literate colonists moved into Natal and on the slopes of the Drakensberg
mountains. Khoi Khoi herdsmen, perhaps having more in common
with Bantu-speaking mixed farmers than did the San, seem to have estab¬
lished more harmonious relations with, for example, Xhosa and Tswana
groups. The description of the Gonaqua by Le Vaillant suggests a history of
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