Bushmen

Bushmen: see San.

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San

 formerly Bushmen

Group of peoples now living mainly in and around the Kalahari Desert region of southern Africa, chiefly Botswana, Namibia, and northwestern South Africa. They are closely related to the Khoekhoe. San languages belong to the Khoisan family. Two well-known San groups are the !Kung (Ju) and the | Gui. The San are, for the most part, physically indistinguishable from the Khoekhoe or from their Bantu-speaking neighbours. Traditional San society centres on the nomadic band of related families. San shelters are semicircular structures of branches, twigs, and grass; their equipment is portable, their possessions few and light. They have traditionally hunted, using bows and snares, and gathered wild vegetables, fruits, and nuts. Numbering in the tens of thousands, most San have been restricted, because of historical and political factors, to harsh, semiarid areas, and they work for wages on European farms or serve other Africans, notably the Tswana.

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Bushmen 

the oldest indigenous population of southern and eastern Africa. The Bushmen live in the Namib and Kalahari deserts, in the vicinity of the Etosha depresion in Namibia, and regions adjacent to it in Botswana, Angola, and the Republic of South Africa; there is a small number in Tanzania. Total population is approximately 50, 000 (1967 estimate). They speak Bushman and Bantu languages. At one time the Bushmen were settled throughout southern Africa, but they were driven back by Bantu peoples migrating from the north and European colonizers (from the south); the latter systematically exterminated the Bushmen. They lead the life of nomadic hunters and gatherers of wild fruits.

The Bushmen are widely known as skillful masters of expressive paintings on rocks. These paintings, executed with mineral and earth pigments, including lime and soot, which aie diluted in water and animal fat, are preserved on the territory of the Republic of South Africa, Lesotho, Rhodesia, and Namibia. The dating of the oldest of these paintings is associated with various theories on the origin of Bushman art and ranges from thousands to several hundreds of years B.C. Motifs in the paintings include realistically depicted animals, dynamic hunting and battle scenes filled with expression, human figures in very elongated proportions, and fabulous creatures. The oldest layers were done with one pigment (red or brown), whereas recent layers (late 19th century) are multicolored with soft transitional tones.

REFERENCES

Ellenberger, V. Tragicheskii konets bushmenov. Moscow, 1956. (Translated from French.)
Tonque, H. Bushmen Paintings. Oxford, 1909.