The San and Khoekhoen were here first

The genetic origins of the San people can be traced back to the beginning of modern humanity during the Later Stone Age. Once called 'Bushmen' (which is today regarded as an insult), they were the indigenous inhabitants of the subcontinent and subsisted by hunting game with bows and arrows, foraging for roots, bulbs and corms, and gathering plants, edible leaves, wild fruits and honey. Some of them were also coastal hunter-gatherers, later called 'strandlopers', who moved along the coast exploiting the varied marine resources available to them. Many of the Later Stone Age sites in the Western Cape (dating from about 22,000 years ago) are located along the coast, where water was more plentiful and food resources were in greater abundance than in the drier hinterland.

Important evidence of the lifestyle of these coastal hunter-gatherers has accumulated at shell middens, of which more than 3,500 have been found along South Africa’s shoreline. Shell middens are waste dumps and can be distinguished from natural accumulations of marine shells by the presence of artefacts and the bones of animals eaten by the people who created the sites. Besides eating game and shellfish, they also consumed birds. Sufficient numbers of beached avian carcasses occur to have provided a viable food supply for coastal foragers.

Most bird remains were initially brought in as food, but bones and ostrich shells also provided raw material for tools, ornaments, containers, and symbolic objects. Ostrich shells were used as flasks for water and as pigment containers. Engraved designs, mostly of simple geometric form, are found on some shell fragments and this practice has been traced back to 60,000 years ago. Ostrich eggshell was sometimes fashioned into pendants, but the most common use was in bead manufacture.

Archaeological evidence shows that at least 1,000 years ago the people known as Khoekhoen arrived at the Cape. Originally called 'Hottentots' by European settlers (a term which is no longer acceptable), the Cape Khoekhoen were descendants of an ancient proto-Khoen population who lived in the wetter Kalahari region of the first millennium BC. Even though no clear estimate of the number of migrating Khoekhoen can be proposed, almost certainly it involved fewer than 80,000 people. They took two distinct routes: one group migrated west, skirting the Kalahari to the west coast, then down into the south-western Cape; the other group migrated south-east out into the Highveld and then down to the south coast.

                          A Khoekhoe kraal of reed huts at what is today Milnerton. Note their distinctive conical hats and the fact that they hunted elephant along the lagoon bank. 

The Khoekhoen kept herds of animals such as goats, cattle, and sheep and had to move around to find enough grazing land for their animals. The animals, especially cattle, were a sign of wealth and the Khoekhoen only ate cattle that had died or had been stolen from their enemies. They only killed their own animals for important occasions such as funerals or weddings. The women milked the animals and gathered wild plants from the veld, while the men killed game for everyday food.

Although the Khoekhoen were predominantly herders, they competed with the San for resources, particularly water and game. They also took to foraging along the coast. This inevitably gave rise to conflict with the San, but the low population numbers of both groups and some integration, combined with the relative vastness of the land which they inhabited, meant that co-existence was possible.

Today, because the two groups have largely intermingled over time, the descendants of the Khoekhoen and San are known as the Khoesan.

                                                                                              A Khoesan reed hut in the region of Brooklyn during the late 1800s.