What country do the Bushmen live in? The Bushmen tribe is the people of Africa: photos, videos, films about the African Bushmen. Life in the desert, rock art, language, religion. Bush People

Bushwoman from Botswana

Bushman children from Namibia

Bushmen's home on a reservation, Namibia

Bushmen (san, sa, sonkwa, masarwa, basarwa, kua listen)) is a collective name applied to several indigenous South African hunter-gatherer peoples who speak Khoisan languages ​​and are classified as the Kapoid race. The total number is about 100 thousand people. According to the latest data, they have the most ancient genotype and are carriers of the oldest Y-chromosomal haplogroup A.

General information about the Bushmen

Story

Currently, few Bushmen retain traditional Lifestyle, the majority are farm workers.

Social system

Bushmen live in groups consisting of several families. They have no leaders, but each group has a healer, who is credited with the ability to communicate with spirits, cause rain, and cure diseases.

The traditional organization of the San consists of several levels. It starts from the nuclear family, then it rises to the level of the community, then to the level of the association of communities, then it rises to the level of the dialect group, which goes back to the linguistic group. Formal leaders are often absent. The basis of the community is made up of associations of couples. Often the marriage is monogamous, but polygamy does occur. Previously, working for a bride was common.

Language

There was no written language before the arrival of Europeans. Fairy tales, legends and songs are passed down orally from generation to generation.

Folklore

Bushman tales and legends stand out from all other tales both in their form and in content: they are not so much fairy tales as fables and myths. The characters in them are animals, and above all the grasshopper, which is credited with creating the Sun, Moon and many animals. The Bushmen also give the celestial bodies names of animals. Thus, they call Orion’s belt three female turtles hanging on a stick; Southern Cross - lionesses; The Magellanic Cloud is a rock goat. They endow their ancestors with zooanthropomorphic characteristics; they are half-human, half-animal. Rock paintings of the ancestors of the Bushmen have survived to this day. By the time Europeans arrived in South Africa, back in the mid-17th century, the Bushmen lived in Stone Age conditions.

Sources of food and drink

From the seeds that accumulate in anthills, the Bushmen cook porridge. Delicacy - fried locusts. They bake tsamma melons in the ashes and squeeze the water out of it.

During the dry season, water is obtained in a special way: they dig a hole at the bottom of a dry spring, then stick a tube with a filter at the end and begin to draw water out of it with their mouth, take water into their mouth, and spit it into the shell of an ostrich egg.

Cloth

The robes consist of loincloths and capes made from animal skins. Girls decorate themselves with necklaces made from ostrich egg shells, bracelets made from grass, colored seeds and plant seeds.

Special headdresses of this people appeared so that people could show each other their hairstyles, which were created by shaving the head and leaving a strand of hair on the top of the head - a custom inherent in women. They also often wore animal bladders, attaching them to their hair (Jolly 2006: 70).

Religion

Most of the people adhere to the traditional original forms of shamanism Bushmen. Its original form is unknown as it was highly modified due to interaction with Christianity. Christians are also present. When a shaman enters a trance, it is customary to say that he "dies" - the trance itself is quite often called a little death or half of death(Dowson 2007: 55). Folklore is quite extensive and varied. The San also owns a considerable number of skillfully executed rock paintings. The shamans of the southern Drakensberg danced and went into trances in stone caves, which always contained rock paintings (Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1990: 12).

Gallery

Famous Bushmen

The most famous among the Bushmen is considered to be Nkhau, a Namibian farmer. He became famous after playing the Kalahari bushman Hiho in two comedy films: “The Gods Must Be Crazy” and its sequel, as well as in three more unofficial sequels filmed in Hong Kong: “ Crazy Safari», « Crazy Hong Kong" And " The Gods Must Be Funny in China».

Royal /Ui/o/oo, elected in 2000 on the SWAPO ticket to the Namibian Parliament, became the first Bushman MP. Another well-known Bushman activist is Roy Sezana, co-founder of the Kalahari First Peoples movement in Botswana.

Bushmen in cinema

In addition to the appearance of the people in the aforementioned comedy “The Gods Must Be Crazy,” the Bushmen are also depicted in the film “Red Scorpion”, where they save the main character from a scorpion sting.

In the film “Cruel Glory” (about the legendary boxer Charles McCoy, nicknamed “Kid”), there is a separate scene in which the boxer is explained that representatives of the Bushmen can run through the desert without sleep, food and water for up to 3 days. He tries to check this and catch up with the bushman. But his strength leaves him by sunset. After which the bushman digs up 2 ostrich eggs and, treating the exhausted boxer with one of them, drives him away. [ ]

Bushmen - rulers of the desert

Bushmen - rulers of the desert

The Bushmen are a small group of hunting tribes in South Africa. The Bushmen preserved the most archaic forms of the socio-economic system, and along with it, religion. Now the Bushmen are already the remnants of a much larger ancient population of this part of Africa, pushed aside by later newcomers, agricultural and pastoral peoples.

Dutch-Boer and English colonization of the 17th-19th centuries. led to the extermination and death of most of the Bushmen tribes remaining by that time. Bushmen tribes were once scattered along the entire coast of the Namib Desert in southwest Africa, from the banks of the Kunene River to the Orange River, and even earlier they lived across much of the African continent.

The Bushmen have no concept of private property. They believe that everything that grows and grazes within the territory of their habitat belongs to everyone. This philosophy has cost the lives of many thousands of bush people.

For one cow killed by the Bushmen, 30 Bushmen were killed. Then, when this most severe measure did not help, the colonial farmers organized several punitive expeditions against the Bushmen tribes, destroying them like wild animals. They were raided using specially poisoned dogs, and dry bushes were burned along with the Bushmen hiding in them. Potent poison was poured into wells in the desert used by the Bushmen. Around one of these wells, 120 corpses of Bushmen were once discovered after tasting the poisoned water. They were destroyed by the Boers, the Dutch, the Germans, and the British. This was at the beginning of the century, but at the end of it little had changed.

Red Afrikaners in the fight against SWAPO partisans widely used the proven method of poisoning water sources. The partisans, including representatives of the Bushmen tribes in their ranks, before drinking water from the well, gave it to prisoners, if they had any at that time, or to dogs. There is no need to be indignant and indignant at the cruelty of blacks, propagated by the Western media, when a poisoned arrow carries away individual white enslavers to the next world. The Europeans who colonized Africa deserve to be treated this way, if not worse.

The Bantu-speaking tribes of Angola and Namibia - Kuanyama, Idongo, Herero, Ambuela and others, being pastoralists, idolize their domestic animals. And if the Bushmen start hunting their cows and goats, serious problems arise. Having lost the cow, they kidnap a young Bushwoman, making her a powerless “last” wife, in other words, a half-slave. Young Bushmen are beautiful, great lovers of dancing and singing.

The Bushmen do not have leaders, like other African tribes. Being in conditions of constant half-starved wandering in the desert, they could not afford such luxury as the existence of leaders, sorcerers and healers living at the expense of society. Instead of leaders, the Bushmen have elders. They are chosen from among the most authoritative, intelligent, experienced members of the clan, and they do not enjoy any material advantages.

Water is the basis of life in the Namib and Kalahiri deserts. Translated into Russian, Kalahiri means “tormented by thirst.” There is no water in the desert, but there is always underground water. Bushmen obtain it everywhere by digging shallow holes, bringing it to the surface with the help of plant stems, or sucking moisture through these stems. Sometimes the Bushmen dig wells six or more meters deep. In some wells the water lasts for a relatively long time, while in others it disappears after a few days. Among the Bushmen there are old people who know how to find disappeared water.

Each group of Bushmen in the desert has secret wells, carefully lined with stones and covered with sand so that not the slightest sign will reveal the location of the most precious storage.

These people have much of what we, the city dwellers, have lost. Their sense of mutual assistance is extremely developed. For example, a child, finding a juicy fruit in the desert, will not eat it, although no one would see it. He will bring the find to the camp, and the elders will divide it equally. And at the same time, when the Bushmen tribe migrates to a new area in search of wild animals and plants, the very old people, unable to go with the tribe, remain in the old place, they are abandoned so as not to be dragged through the desert: “There is no need to wait for many moons in a row until the old man or woman dies or recovers.”

Bushmen believe in an afterlife and are very afraid of the dead. They have special rituals for burying the dead in the ground, but they do not have the cult of ancestors that prevails among more developed African tribes.

Most characteristic in the religion of the Bushmen as a hunting people - a hunting cult. With prayers for success in fishing, they turn to various natural phenomena (the sun, moon, stars) and to supernatural beings. Here is one such prayer: “O moon! Up there, help me kill the gazelle. Let me eat gazelle meat. Help me hit the gazelle with this arrow, with this arrow, with this arrow. Help me fill my stomach."

The Bushmen turn with the same prayer to the mantis grasshopper, which is called tsg'aang or tsg'aangen, that is, lord. “Sir, bring me a male wildebeest. I love it when my stomach is full. Mister! Send me a wildebeest!”

The language of the Bushmen is very difficult for Europeans to pronounce. They have no numerals: one and all, and then many. They speak very quietly among themselves, apparently a habit of primitive hunters, so as not to frighten the game.

Wandering through the desert in search of edible plants or chasing antelopes, the Bushmen do not stay in one place. Where night finds them, they dig a shallow hole, build a screen on the windward side of grass, brushwood, and bush branches and lie down for the night. They usually set up their camp among the bushes, for which, apparently, they received the name “bush people” from the Europeans, that is, Bushmen. Permanent housing for the Bushmen differs slightly from temporary housing. They build it using the same materials and antelope skins. The Bushmen are nomads, and when food runs out, they leave the area and go further in search of it.

Having established a new camp, women make long journeys in search of ostrich eggs. Their contents are carefully released through a small hole made with a stone awl, and the shells are braided with grass. Bushmen make flasks for water from ostrich eggs, without which not a single Bushman would set off on a journey. Children, together with their mothers, collect fragments of shells from eggs (after the ostrich chicks hatch), carefully polish them, giving them an oval shape, drill a hole in the center of the oval with a sharp bone and string them onto a tendon. Beads, earrings, pendants and monistas are made in this way. They are also used for dressing the skins of wild animals, decorating them with ornaments.

The Bushmen do not have their own livestock, so they do not know how to handle domestic animals. Only those who worked on white haciendas and farms learned, for example, to milk cows. If possible, Bushmen suck the milk of cows and goats directly from the udder. There are cases when Bushmen find female oryx antelopes in the desert and suckle milk along with the heifer. The case is incredible, but such mutual understanding takes place. They explain this as "an antelope's understanding of the desires of a bushman asking for milk."

No one in Africa can compare with the Bushmen in their knowledge of nature. Bushmen are unsurpassed hunters and trackers, artists and experts on snakes, insects and plants. They are the best dancers, endowed with an amazing ability to imitate. There is a belief that the Bushmen understand the “language” of baboons (baboons). It is clear that the language of the Bushmen has nothing in common with the “language” of the baboons, but still it is a primitive, ancient language, it cannot be attributed to any language group.

Once, watching through the optics the actions of a bushman when communicating with a female oryx, I thought that our distant ancestors, apparently just like this bushman, lived among the wild and tamed a dog, a cow, a goat, a horse, a pig and other animals , which are now called domestic. Our outstanding zoologists and game managers have made and are making vain attempts to tame wild animals, for example, elk, bison, wolf, but the results of their efforts are scanty - humans don’t “smell” like that. Apparently, the invisible threads connecting man with the animal world, with nature, have been severed. It seemed to me that if the Bushmen were now engaged in the “planned domestication” of wild animals, they would get phenomenal results. Civilized man does not get along with timid wild animals; they can only be successfully domesticated by people who are at the same level as our distant ancestors, who tamed today's domestic animals.

Modern explorers of Africa call the Bushmen “rulers of the desert.” It's hard to disagree with this. We jokingly called them “primitive communists.”

Under natural conditions, the Bushmen are physically the strongest people that doctors have ever encountered. I remember a case when a Bushman wounded in the stomach was dragged by his comrades in arms on a makeshift stretcher for “seven moons” (seven days), after which only twenty hours later the opportunity to operate on him presented itself. Our surgeon cut out one and a half meters of intestines, but it was not possible to sew them up. According to the surgeon, with such a wound the white man would have died within 24 hours. Bushman underwent surgery, and two weeks later he could be seen among the convalescents, happily chatting and dancing.

Bushmen do not attach importance to even serious injuries. Doctors sometimes performed operations without anesthesia, and at this time the Bushmen being operated on talked animatedly.

In one Bushman settlement we saw an old disabled Bushman, he had no foot. As a child, he got his foot caught in a steel trap. Bushman understood that if he did not free himself from it, he would become prey for the leopard. He did not have the strength to unclench the steel arcs of the trap, and he cut off his foot at the tendon. Lost a lot of blood, but remained alive.

The vitality of the Bushmen is also evidenced by the fact that when a group of Bushmen wanders through the desert and at that moment one of the Bushmen is caught in childbirth, she simply leaves the group for a while, and then, with the born child, catches up with her relatives who have gone ahead.

Bushwomen breastfeed their children for several years, and until the next birth he suckles at the mother's breast, and the next birth may be three or four years later. According to the laws of the desert, a Bushman mother kills a newborn if it is born before the specified time in order to give the previous child the opportunity to survive.

The Bushmen do not have their own livestock, they get meat sporadically, and they also lack berries, roots, lizards and termites.

There is a high infant mortality rate among the Bushmen. Unlike pastoral African tribes, where there can be up to eight wives, in a Bushman family you can find 2-3 children, and the age difference between them is significant. Families with 5 children are very rare. But surviving children become almost invulnerable to disease and easily endure hunger if it happens.

Bushmen do not suffer from epidemic diseases that affect Europeans if they live freely. They have their own medicinal herbs and roots. For headaches, for example, they use the roots of special plants, heat them over a fire and apply them to the head.

The Bushmen use everything for food. They bake locusts and winged termites, lizards, caterpillars and centipedes on coals. They eat the roots and fruits of wild plants, but the Bushmen's favorite dish is meat. If a Bushman has it, it’s happiness. And he has an excellent appetite: despite his very short stature and frail physique, the Bushman’s stomach can accommodate an incredible amount of meat. It is apparently capable of stretching like a rubber inner tube. A Bushman family can eat a medium-sized antelope in one meal; they eat like wolves for several hours.

Bushman women are characterized by steatopygia - disproportionately developed buttocks and hips. Nature itself made sure that there was a large layer of subcutaneous fat on the hips and buttocks of the Bushmen, which facilitates survival in times of famine.

No people could live in the conditions in which the Bushmen live: a bare desert, where there is no water and food, the temperature during the day stays at +50 C. The ears swell from the scorching sun of the desert and become like boiled dumplings, due to Unbearable heat causes “chalky” dryness in the mouth. Mirages haunt you all the time: either emerald groves or turquoise lakes. And in these wild places forgotten by God you suddenly find traces, but this is no longer a mirage. These are traces of the Bushmen who constantly live in these places.

Even children carried by their mothers on their backs, because they are too small to walk independently with their parents, can drink bitter and stinking water like antelopes, because they know that the distance between this and the next sources of water is very long. In the savannah, during the dry season, when not a single drop of water falls from the sky for six months, all the springs dry up. Only isolated pits remain, the approaches to them are dotted with traces of various animals - both large and small. The water in these pits turns brownish-green. Everyone comes to her, fly and crawl to quench their thirst: elephants, buffalos and giraffes, storks and crows, lizards and monitor lizards, flies and spiders. I don’t know how many different “sticks” and “columns” there are in it. You can still drink this liquid once, but for the rest of your life? It’s simply incredible, and the Bushmen drink, live and thrive.

Bushmen know antidotes against poisonous snakes and scorpions. Some Bushmen swallow the venom of poisonous snakes and scorpions, thereby developing immunity. They use the root of a creeping plant against the bites of poisonous reptiles. They call this plant zoocam. They also use its seeds as an antidote. A tissue incision is made at the site of the bite. The one who sucks out the poison, if the bitten person cannot do this, chews this root in his mouth, turning it into pulp, leaves it in the mouth and sucks out the poison from the cut of the wound. Bushmen always carry this root with them around their necks in a special bag for immediate use in case of a bite.

To hunt wild animals, Bushmen widely use poisoned arrowheads. They lubricate them. Arrows with tips coated with snake venom are formidable weapons. No animal can survive if this poison enters the bloodstream.

Each Bushmen tribe has its own recipes for preparing poisons. Wandering across the savannah and desert, the Bushmen look for the plants needed to make them. Completely non-poisonous plants can also serve as components of the poison, but by mixing the juice and pollen of these plants with others, deadly recipes are obtained that are not inferior in strength to the venom of a cobra or mamba.

Bushmen who hunt game with poisoned arrows do not always cut out the place where the arrow hit: they believe that the meat around the wound is the most delicious.

Bushman arrows without fletching. They sneak up to the animal at a very close distance and shoot arrows. At a short distance, they accurately hit the target without losing direction.

Some Bushmen make poisoned tips from bone, but most use metal ones for hunting, store and carry them in special pencil cases or leather bags. When shooting, they connect the arrowhead to a shaft, which can be made of reeds or carved wood. All hunters in southern Africa have arrows that are a real work of art. Thin, light, carved from wood, with a dark brown or ocher pattern applied. Bows are primitive, but reliable.

Bushmen pull the bowstring with two fingers: index and middle. The Bushmen taught me how to shoot with their bows. At first it seemed to me that it was very simple, and I tried to pull the bowstring with my thumb and forefinger, but nothing came of it. The bow is quite tight, and I didn’t have enough strength to pull it this way. They showed how to draw a bow, and I succeeded - the arrow flew towards the target. Handling a Bushman bow requires a lot of training and skill.

Bushmen use removable tips to more reliably hit prey.

Bushmen hunt and hide the animal in the bush (bush), and if the tip is tightly connected to the shaft, the arrow can fall out of the body of the animal, which, after being wounded, rushes through the bushes, catching the arrow on twigs and branches. The tip, mounted loosely on the shaft, always remains in the body, and the poison reliably poisons the blood of the victim.

This tribe has an interesting way of poisoning ungulates, mainly antelopes, that come to drink. To do this, they use the poisonous plant Zuporbia candelabra. The Bushmen block off the source of water with a fence made of dry thorny bushes, next to it they dig a hole in the ground and fill it with water along the ditch, throwing branches of a poisonous plant there. The released juice covers the water with foam. Antelopes come to the source, and, seeing the barrier, begin to poke around in search of an approach to the water. Having found it, they drink from the poisoned puddle. It all depends on the amount of water and zuporbia branches. If there is enough poison, the antelope may die not far from the source. Even such large animals as zebra or wildebeest become prey. The meat of animals poisoned in this way is not poisonous.

When hunting ostriches, antelopes, zebras, the bushman always uses appropriate camouflage and his ability to imitate the movements of animals. For ostriches, he uses their skin. Raising the bird's head high on a stick, he enters the center of a flock of ostriches, twitching his feathers as he goes, as birds do.

When hiding antelopes, a bushman always uses a bush of dry grass or bushes, such as those that surround grazing antelopes. When hunting, the bushman shows exceptional patience. If he wounds an antelope, he sometimes pursues it for several days, but will never part with his trophy. At the same time, he tracks the animal without rest, finding tracks even on rocky ground, where practically nothing is visible.

The Bushmen never kept livestock. The only domestic animal that always accompanies a Bushman is a dog. Apparently, this animal has been serving the Bushman for millennia. Bushman dogs are mongrels of a light brown color, with a dark or black belt on the back, with erect ears, an oblong muzzle, the size of our Russian hound. The dog is vicious. Silently the bushman and his dog move through the desert like shadows. Sensing danger, the dog will only yelp slightly, warning the owner.

Bushmen are among the shortest people on earth, but they are not dwarfs. Very proportionally built, their physical strength is disproportionately great compared to their height. The Bushmen are somewhat similar to the Mongoloids because of their eyes. The hot climate made their eyes narrow and formed characteristic folds around them. Their skin color varies between dark yellow and chocolate. Men have a sparse mustache and goatee on their faces.

The bushmen, who work on agricultural farms, have learned to skillfully ride horses and hunt antelope. Having caught up with the animal, the bushman jumps off his horse at full gallop and strangles his prey with a rawhide belt. They surprisingly quickly learned to plow and drive oxen.

The Bushmen are not such simpletons, no matter how primitive they may be. When one ancient Bushman was asked how old he was, the old man replied: “I am young, like the most beautiful desire of my soul, and old, like all the unfulfilled dreams of my life.”

Currently, the Bushmen do not paint and cannot say anything about the drawings left by their ancestors. However, there is reliable evidence that at the end of the year before last and the beginning of the last century, the Bushmen were engaged in drawing. Numerous caves contain amazing rock paintings by unknown artists. On the walls are depicted buffalos, huge black figures of people, gazelles and birds, ostriches and cheetahs, eland antelopes. Later artists added other characters to them: people with crocodile faces, half-humans, half-monkeys, dancing people and eared snakes. These cave paintings are the most realistic images known to scientists.

By nature, Bushmen are very truthful. They do not know how to lie and be a hypocrite. They remember grievances for a long time. The Bushmen do not have an accurate understanding of time, they do not know what money is, and they do not look into the future. If they have water and meat, there are no happier people in Africa than the Bushmen. These are real children of the wild.

Leave a Bushman alone in the desert, naked, empty-handed, and he will get himself food, water, clothing, make a fire and live an ordinary life.

When you see the Bushmen in their native environment, you see your distant ancestors.

The Khoisan people are Bushmen. Kalahari Desert. The most disadvantaged people in Africa. Hunting and gathering wild fruits and roots. Throwing spears, bow, arrows, leather bag for game - a man's equipment. Iron tools were obtained through exchange from the Hottengoths. Skillful and hardy in hunting. A hunter can pursue an antelope for 2-3 days, disguised as an ostrich, and using traps. There are no strong settlements. Temporary camps, windbreaks, huts, and hunters could sleep in holes dug in the warm sand. Loincloths. Almost no household utensils. Tribes are only ethnic associations, economic associations - local groups led by the most successful hunter. Trade cult. Hunters turned to the sun, moon, and stars with prayers for success in hunting. Vibrant rock art.

Pygmies. Deep in the tropical forests of the Congo Basin. They did not know agriculture or cattle breeding. Hunting lifestyle. Small groups constantly wandering in search of food within clear boundaries. Exchange with the Bantu: forest products and game for agricultural products and iron knives, arrowheads. The main object of veneration is the forest spirit - the owner of the game. Totemism.

Bushmen (English bushman, from Dutch bosjesman, literally - forest man), the oldest indigenous population of South and East Africa. They live in the Kalahari and Namib deserts, in the vicinity of the Etosha depression in Namibia, in the adjacent regions of Botswana, Angola and South Africa; a small number in Tanzania. The total number is about 50 thousand people. (1967, assessment). They speak Bushman languages ​​as well as Bantu languages. B. were once settled throughout South Africa, but were pushed aside by the Bantu peoples who migrated with S. and European colonialists (from S.); the latter systematically exterminated B. They lead the life of wandering hunters and gatherers of wild fruits. They are known as skilled masters of expressive rock paintings. These paintings, made with mineral and earthen paints, as well as lime and soot diluted with water and animal fat, have been preserved in South Africa, Lesotho, Rhodesia and Namibia. The dating of the oldest of them is associated with various theories of the origin of the art of Byelorussia and ranges from millennia to several hundred years BC. e. The motifs of the paintings are realistically depicted animals, dynamic, full of expression scenes of hunting and fighting, human figures, highly elongated in proportions, fantastic creatures. The oldest layers are made with one paint (red or brown), the later ones (late 19th century) are polychrome with soft transitions of tones.

Mythological representations of the Bushmen of Namibia and the adjacent regions of Botswana, Angola and South Africa. The mythology of the Bushmen belongs to the archaic mythologies; it is characterized by the anthropomorphization of nature and totemic ideas.

The English word "bushman" means "man of the bush" and is sometimes considered offensive; however, the Bushmen themselves do not have a self-name common to all tribes, and the widely used alternative name “San” in South Africa is Hottentot (in the Nama language) and has a pejorative connotation in this language (“outsider”, “stranger”).

Anthropologically they differ from Negroids because they have lighter skin, thin lips; belong to the so-called capoid race. A feature of languages ​​is the presence of clicking sounds. A special feature of the national cuisine is the consumption of “Bushman rice” - ant larvae.

The exact date of settlement of South Africa by the Bushmen is not known. It is assumed that this happened about 10-20 thousand years ago. Beginning in the 15th century AD, they were gradually displaced by Bantu-speaking pastoralists who came from the north deep into the Kalahari Desert. They suffered greatly from European colonialists in the period from the mid-17th century to the beginning of the 20th century, during which about 200,000 people of the indigenous population were killed. Those who survived either went deep into the desert or became slaves on farms. Systematic persecution of the Bushmen did not occur only in Botswana.

The Bushmen do not have leaders, like other African tribes. Being in conditions of constant half-starved wandering in the desert, they could not afford such luxury as the existence of leaders, sorcerers and healers living at the expense of society. Instead of leaders, the Bushmen have elders. They are chosen from among the most authoritative, intelligent, experienced members of the clan, and they do not enjoy any material advantages.

Bushmen believe in an afterlife and are very afraid of the dead. They have special rituals for burying the dead in the ground, but they do not have the cult of ancestors that prevails among more developed African tribes.

Currently, few Bushmen maintain a traditional way of life; the majority are farm workers.

Bushmen are excellent storytellers and storytellers. They are inimitable in music, pantomime and dance. The simplest musical instrument is a hunting bow, strung with animal hair, with an empty melon or empty tin can attached as a resonator. Moth cocoons, fastened like beads and filled with pebbles or seeds, are worn around the ankles and beat out a rhythm during the dance. Nowadays, many are trying to film and record the songs, rituals and tales of the Bushmen in order to preserve this ancient African culture for posterity.

Until recently, the African Bushmen tribe did not have the concept of private property. According to their ideas, all animals on earth are common, and anyone can hunt them. The bushman doesn't care who to kill - a wild antelope or a cow that the owners didn't notice. Neither African tribes nor white settlers could tolerate such people next to them. Together they pushed the Bushmen back into the barren deserts.

Until recently, the African Bushmen tribe did not have the concept of private property. According to their ideas, all animals on earth are common, and anyone can hunt them. The bushman doesn't care who to kill - a wild antelope or a cow that the owners didn't notice. Neither African tribes nor white settlers could tolerate such people next to them. Together they pushed the Bushmen back into the barren deserts.
Open air gallery. Exhibition hall - African savannah. Instead of canvases there are stones on which strange images are carved. Grace and harmony of lines are combined here with extreme conventionality of images. An elephant that looks like a huge comma. The sun resembles a cuttlefish. The head of a rhinoceros... David Morris, archaeologist: “Most of all there are images of eland antelopes, rhinoceroses and ostriches. A number of researchers believe that not all of these drawings were made by Bushmen, but our research suggests the opposite.” Anthropologists believe that all of southern Africa below the Zambezi River was once Bushman territory. But gradually Negroid tribes pushed them north into deserts and forests. This people got their name from white settlers: Bushmen means forest people. The forest is a natural habitat for them, just like for animals and birds. It is not for nothing that in the minds of the Bushmen, they, together with everything that exists in nature - animals, heavenly bodies - used to be one people. The sun in Bushman myths is a man whose armpits glowed. When he raised his hand, the earth was illuminated with light; when he went to bed, everything plunged into darkness.
David Morris: “The primitive Bushmen did not draw for their own pleasure. It was hunting magic: images carved on stone were identified with real animals. Many drawings are symbolic in nature. Like, for example, a lamb in Christian art - it is not just a lamb, but embodiment of a certain idea." Now the Bushmen themselves do not remember what these symbols mean. One of the most mysterious images carved on stone by the Bushmen is an ostrich with two heads. Scientists are still wondering why the Bushmen needed to depict two ostrich heads instead of one. Many animals - such as the rhinoceros, elephant or hippopotamus - were endowed by the Bushmen magical properties. The rhinoceros was considered a "rain beast". By depicting it on a stone, the Bushmen thought that they were causing rain. Rain, or rather the Rain Cloud, was one of the main Bushmen deities. When going hunting, men asked the gods to send them luck, and upon returning, part of the prey was necessarily sacrificed to them.
In recent decades, scientists have shown such interest in the Bushmen that it can only be called Bushmania. The number of articles written about this people probably exceeds the number of Bushmen themselves. This is understandable - until recently, the Bushmen maintained a primitive way of life, and their ability to survive in the most incredible conditions is legendary. This is partly why the image of a Bushman has become established in the mass consciousness - a kind of adult child living in complete harmony with himself and nature. But the world is changing quickly, changing the lives of entire nations. The village of Muepa is sixty kilometers from the city of Kimberley. This territory once belonged to African tribe Tswana, friendly to the Bushmen. In the late seventies, the government built a military base here and resettled the indigenous people to other lands. After the fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa, the base ceased to exist. For some time it was empty, but gradually Bushmen began to settle here. Most migrated here from southern Zambia, but many came from Angola and Namibia.
Salvador, Bushman: “In fact, representatives of two tribes live here. Both are Bushmen, but from different parts of Africa. They have quite little in common. Different cultures, different traditions, even different languages. So much so that people have difficulty understanding each other. You have to use sign language or Afrikaans. But not everyone knows it." The Bushman's speech sounds extremely unusual to our ears. This is something of an exercise to develop clear diction. One of the researchers of the African continent called the Bushmen “the last living fossils on the planet.” By the beginning of the last century, there were less than ten thousand of them. It was believed that this people was doomed to extinction, since, in principle, they were unable to adapt to the conditions of modern civilization. But over the past hundred years, the number of Bushmen has increased almost tenfold.
Bushmen are nomads. Their home is a hut or canopy made of branches and grass. Until recently, they fed exclusively by hunting. Moreover, domestic animals that belonged to white farmers or other tribes, in their minds, were no different from wild animals. Salvador: “Before, people hunted when they needed and killed as much as they needed. Then we were told that we couldn’t hunt without a special permit. The Bushmen don’t understand this and don’t accept it. A permit is just a piece of paper. By what right? white officials forbid us to do what we did when they were not here at all? For a bushman, hunting is not just taking a gun and going to the savannah. It is a way of communicating with our gods. Why do you need to get some kind of paper for this from the whites?
In an effort to tie the Bushmen to a place, the South African government allocated them twelve thousand hectares of land. By the way, very close to the village of Muepa. The home of a modern bushman is, in the recent past, an army tent converted into an “apartment.” Of course, there are no walls inside. Instead, there are sheets hung on wires. By the way, it’s very convenient: you can create as many rooms as you want. The atmosphere here is not much different from what we are used to seeing in a student dormitory. The same sagging beds that, at the slightest attempt to sit on them, emit a monstrous creak. The same shabby bedside tables. But electricity is not always available and not all tents have it. The transition to a sedentary lifestyle completely changed the habits and psychology of the Bushmen. But many objects surrounding them still remind of the hunting past of this people. A typical Bushman accessory is, at first glance, an ordinary stick on which some patterns are carved and burned. In fact, it’s not a stick at all, but a universal set of knives. An indispensable tool. And defense.
Many Muepa villagers work as shepherds for white farmers. An equally common profession is that of a caretaker in a nature reserve or national park. Here the Bushmen have no competitors - no one knows the habits of animals and birds better than them. True, young Bushmen no longer feel at home in the forest and savannah. They are more interested in football than hunting. Football among the Bushmen is not just the most popular sport. It is like a religion for them. The most interesting thing is that they learned about this sport quite recently - in the sixties of the last century. Moreover, the Bushmen who lived in Angola, which at that time was a colony of Portugal, were the first to learn about football. Not everyone can buy a real soccer ball here. But this doesn’t bother the boys at all - they chase everything that comes under their feet.
Bushmen adaptations to modern life- the process is quite painful. Along with the advantages, they also receive all the disadvantages of civilization. Until recently, the Bushmen did not even know what alcoholic beverages were. Now alcoholism is one of the main problems of this people. After all, for a bushman, even the strongest, one hundred grams of whiskey is enough to completely lose his human appearance. If this disaster cannot be dealt with, the Bushmen risk actually becoming “the last living fossils on the planet.” However, Salvador has his own opinion on this matter: “We survived more than twenty years of war in Namibia, we survived in the lifeless sands of the Kalahari. Survival is an art that we learned from the very beginning. So, I think we will survive this time too.” .

13.5.2.Bushmen

Lifestyle. Bushmen - they are now called san, were (and partly still are) hunters and gatherers. From time immemorial they roamed the Kalahari Desert and surrounding semi-deserts. The adaptability of the Bushmen to life in the desert amazed travelers. South African expert Lawrence Greene wrote about the Bushmen: “No African people can compare with the Bushmen in knowledge of nature. They are unsurpassed hunters, experts on snakes, plants and insects, they are artists and heirs of rich folklore.” Excellent knowledge of nature, the ability to get water and find food among stones and sands allowed the Bushmen to survive where it seemed impossible to live. Bushmen usually roam near water sources, but when the sources dry up, they know where to look for water. Having found a seemingly dry spring, they dig a hole in the sand until they reach the aquifer. Water is collected in vessels made from whole ostrich egg shells with a hole at one end. The bushwoman takes a stalk of reed, ties a bunch of grass to the end and lowers it into the hole. Taking the free end of the stem into her mouth, the woman creates a kind of vacuum in the buried bunch of grass, due to which the water quickly rises up the stem into her mouth. Another reed or straw carries water from the mouth into the egg. When there is no water, the Bushmen dig up succulent tubers and roots of water-bearing plants.

The Bushmen are divided into tribes that differ in language, degree of preservation of culture and the extent of mixing with their Bantu neighbors (there are “yellow” and “black” Bushmen). For thousands of years they led a nomadic lifestyle, but now many tribes have switched to sedentary life. Bushmen roam in groups of 10 to 30 (sometimes up to 50) people. Groups consist of relatives and affiliated friends, i.e. people with whom it is easy to live and work. For housing, Bushmen use huts made of branches tied at the top and covered with grass or skins. They store personal belongings in huts and sleep during the hottest part of the day. They prefer to spend the night outdoors, sitting in circles around a fire. In former times, fire was produced by friction. Traditional clothing is limited to a loincloth. Women wear a cloak made from whole antelope skin - kaross, also serving as a bag for carrying food and a sleeping mat. The main hunting weapon of the Bushmen is the bow - the tips of the arrows are rubbed with poison obtained from plants and insect larvae. They also use a spear, set snares, traps, and dig holes. Women are busy collecting edible insects, plants, fruits and roots.

Getting food. The bulk of food, 60–80%, is obtained by women. Bushmen tribe kung, living in the Kalahari on the border of Botswana and Nabia, the main food product is nuts mongongo. Mongongo trees produce a constant and abundant harvest of nuts, which are superior in nutritional value and calorie content to cereal crops. Mongongo bears fruit all year round. Women also collect berries, fruits, herbs, edible resins, roots, seeds, bulbs, wild watermelons and melons (during the rainy season) - more than 100 types of edible plant foods. They search for and find insects (grasshoppers, caterpillars, beetles, termites), which provide up to 10% of protein food. Men also participate in gathering, but less than women. The abundance of edible plants is so great that the Bushmen only need 20 hours of gathering a week to provide the tribe with food. Still, the Bushmen get about a third of their calories from meat foods.

Procuring meat is the job of men. Contrary to popular stories, the Bushmen get most of their meat not from hunting antelope or buffalo with poisoned arrows, but from hunting small mammals, many of which live underground. Here the main hunting tools are a probe, a long shelf with a hook at the end and a snare. Well-trained dogs are hunting assistants. Bushmen are unsurpassed trackers. Based on the tracks, they determine the type of animal, its age, state of health, how long ago it passed, what time of day it left the tracks, and whether the animal was hungry or well-fed. Hunters follow the tracks to pursue valuable game (some type of antelope). The most difficult thing is to get close to the prey, because the Bushman bow is effective no further than 35 m. Having made a successful shot, the hunter acts strange at first glance: he goes to the parking lot, where he calmly goes to bed. The next day, having captured helpers to carry the prey, the hunter goes to the place where the shot was shot, and then follows the tracks to find the killed animal. The fact is that a light Bushman arrow does not kill, but transfers poison, and the hunter has time to rest while the poison does its job.

It is curious that the successful hunter is not praised at all, and he himself belittles his success in every possible way. In Richard Lee's book, bushman Gaugo explains how a hunter should behave if he has killed a large animal: “Let's say a man was hunting. He shouldn't come home and say like a braggart: "I killed something big in the bush!" He must first sit down and be silent until I or someone else comes to his fire and asks: “What did you see today?” He answers calmly: “I’m not fit for hunting. I didn’t see anything at all... maybe something small.” Then I smile in my heart, because I know he killed something big.” The men who went to carry the meat to the camp also expressed disdain for the spoils. They ridicule the prey, saying that there is no point in carrying this pile of bones home, but the hunter agrees with them and suggests, throwing everything to the hyenas, to start a new hunt. This ancient custom is aimed at humbling the pride of hunters and maintaining the equality of members of the tribe. It is customary to thank not the hunter, but the spirit of the killed animal. The liver of the animal is eaten by men at the hunting site, as it is believed that it contains poison that is dangerous for women.

Nutrition. Contrary to speculation about “pathetic savages” driven into the desert (where they have always lived), the Bushmen eat better not only than the inhabitants of Black Africa, but the fat Americans from the “Golden Billion”. With their small stature, Bushmen consume 2,355 calories and 96.3 g of protein per day, which exceeds WHO average standards. At the same time, the food is balanced - 2/3 plant and 1/3 animal food, contains all the necessary vitamins and does not contain refined carbohydrates (white bread, polished rice, sugar), margarine and cola drinks that the body does not need. Getting food and other housework takes little time for the Bushmen. Richard Lee calculated that Doba women spend 12.6 hours a week on gathering, 5.1 hours on making clothes and utensils, 22.4 hours on cooking and housekeeping; only 40.1 hours. Men work a little more: 21.6 hours are spent on hunting and gathering, 7.5 hours on the manufacture and repair of weapons and hunting tools, 15.4 hours on housework; only 44.5 hours per week. For comparison, the average American or Canadian spends about 40 hours a week on housework (with all washing machines), and also works at least 8 hours five days a week, i.e. another 40 hours a week. The Bushmen clearly have more free time than the Americans, but they spend their leisure time not on TV or the Internet, but on live communication.

Social life. The Bushmen, like the Pygmies, have no leaders or elders. Reports of Bushman chiefs are based on misunderstandings. Decisions are made jointly by general consent, with women participating in discussions on an equal basis with men. Bushman society is a society of equals. Everything hunted and collected by women is divided among members of the clan. The main activity of the Bushmen in their free time is communication. People constantly visit - they move from one parking lot to another. There they meet with friends, exchange gifts and, along with family members, enjoy the food obtained through common efforts. Hosts and guests spend most of their time talking; they joke a lot, sing, play musical instruments, and dance sacred dances.

Marriage and family. Parents agree on their children's engagement when they are still young. Restrictions that prevent marriage are taken into account: too close a relationship and the coincidence of the groom’s name with the names of the bride’s relatives (the same for the bride). To seal the engagement, parents exchange gifts. The actual marriage occurs when the bride and groom are already grown up. Boys get married at 18–25 years old, girls get married at 12–16 years old. The bride's parents finally agree to give their daughter in marriage only after taking a closer look at the groom. He must satisfy two basic requirements: to be a good hunter and not to be a bully with a tendency to fight. The first marriage begins with a staged kidnapping. The bride is forcibly taken away from her parents and brought to the groom's hut. The next day, the young ones are anointed with a mixture of nut oil and aromatic seeds. The Twa woman shares with Richard Lee the details of the upcoming marriage of the young man Tom and her daughter Kushi:

“When Toma comes from the east, we will arrange a marriage. First we will build a house where they can live. Then Toma will go into the hut and wait, and we, the “mothers” and “grandmothers,” will go and bring Kushi. She will cry and cry, resist, fight and scream at us. Other girls have to be carried on their backs. And all the time we tell her: “We are giving this man to you. He is not a stranger: he is our man and a good man; he will not harm you, and we are yours Tunsi(“mother”), we will be next to you in this village.” When she has calmed down a little, we will go into the hut and sit around the fire to talk. Then everyone will want to sleep; we will leave, leaving the older girl with our daughter: they will sleep together, so Kushi will lie between her friend and her husband. The next morning we will wash and paint them. We will wash the husband and wife with a mixture of mongongo oil and melon seeds Ttsama. And we’ll paint it from head to toe with red ointment.”

It is not always the case that a bride who is kidnapped resists pretending. After all, she was not asked when her parents agreed on the marriage. Now her time has come, and if the bride persistently expresses dissatisfaction, then the marriage will not take place. No one will force a girl to live with someone she doesn’t love. The fact that almost half of first marriages immediately break up suggests that Bushman girls know how to stand up for themselves. Marriages where the girl only pretended to be dissatisfied last a long time, until the death of one of the spouses. Husband and wife are mutually attached, although it is not customary to show feelings: spouses prefer to joke and tease each other. Anthropologist Lorna Marshall estimates that the divorce rate in such marriages does not exceed 10%. During a divorce, spouses part on good terms; usually, good, humorous relations remain between them. As a matter of fact, the Bushmen do not have marriage and divorce in the “civilized” sense: people simply live together or stop living together.

Among the Bushmen, monogamous marriages predominate. Of the 131 married men surveyed, 122, i.e. 93%, had one wife, 6 men had two wives, one lived with three wives, and two shared common wife. All polygamists were healers: among the Bushmen it is believed that healers have special powers, and wives are proud of such husbands. The remaining husbands are happy to have a second wife, but their wives prevent them. And the Bushmen take their wives seriously. In old age, many Bushmen are left alone due to the death of a husband or wife and are forced to enter into a second marriage.

Sexual traditions. Bushmen children up to 7-8 years old run around naked. They observe the not-so-hidden sex of their relatives and neighbors and begin to imitate them, first in games. As you get older, sex games give way to group teenage sex. Most boys and girls have sex from the age of 15. Therefore, the bride's resistance when she is taken to the groom's hut has nothing to do with fear of losing her virginity. Married couples most often start having sex in the evening near a dying fire. They lie on their sides, facing the fire, the man behind the woman. Young people have sex during the day in the bush. Their poses are varied: a boy on top or a girl on top, approaching in front and behind. Bushmen know well what a female orgasm is and use a word for it that means the taste of wild honey. Bushmen do not have oral and anal sex, interruption of sex and sadomasochistic entertainment characteristic of “civilized” people. Until recently, they did not know what rape was. Now, with the import of alcoholic beverages, cases have appeared.

Homosexuality is not common among the Bushmen, although it does occur occasionally. Occasionally, children and adolescents engage in it, and even less often, adults, women and men. But male homosexuality is more common than female homosexuality (lesbianism). According to Richard Lee, of the six men and two women who had homosexual relationships, all were married, that is, all were bisexual. Other Bushmen regard such people with a mixture of amazement and curiosity, but without any hostility.

Bushmen today. These days, the idyllic life of the Bushmen in the Kalahari is coming to an end. Increasingly, they come into contact with civilization, and black Africans are its guides. Armed with firearms, they hunt many more Kalahari animals, depriving the Bushmen of a source of meat. In return, the Bantu - Herero and Bechuanas hire the Bushmen as guides and give them the rest of the booty. They also use Bushmen as shepherds when grazing herds, but the Bushmen do not have their own livestock. Black Africans willingly take as wives Bushmen women who are pretty in their youth. In addition to beauty, Bushmen are also free, because you don’t have to pay a ransom to your parents for them. The Bantu themselves do not give their girls to the Bushmen.