Khoesan
 |
|
| Regions with significant populations | |
|---|---|
| Southern Africa | |
| Languages | |
| Afrikaans,Khoisan languages | |
| Religion | |
| Mainly Christian and African Traditional Religion | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| perhaps Sandawe people |
"Khoisan" (/ˈkɔɪsɑːn/; also spelled Khoesaan, Khoesan or Khoe–San) is a unifying name for two groups of peoples of Southern Africa, who share physical and putative linguistic characteristics distinct from the Bantu majority of the region. Culturally, the Khoisan are divided into the foraging San, or Bushmen, and the pastoral Khoi, or more specifically Khoikhoi, previously known as Hottentots.
The San include the indigenous inhabitants of Southern Africa before the southward Bantu migrations from Central and East Africa reached their region, which led to the Bantu populations displacing the Khoi and San to become the predominant inhabitants of Southern Africa. The distinct origin of the Khoi is debated. Over time, some Khoi abandoned pastoralism and adopted the hunter-gatherer economy of the San, probably due to a drying climate, and are now considered San. Similarly, the Bantu Damara people who migrated south later abandoned agriculture and adopted the Khoi economy. Large Khoisan populations remain in several arid areas in the region, notably in the Kalahari Desert.
From the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic periods, hunting and gathering cultures known as the Sangoan occupied southern Africa in areas where annual rainfall is less than a metre (1000 mm; 40 in), and today's San and Khoi people resemble the ancient Sangoan skeletal remains. These Late Stone Age people in parts of southern Africa were the ancestors of the Khoisan people who inhabited the Kalahari Desert. Probably due to their region's lack of suitable candidates for domestication, the Khoisan did not have farming or domesticated chickens until a few hundred years ago, when they adopted the domesticated cattle and sheep of the Bantu that had spread in advance of the people's actual arrival. The Bantu people, with advanced agriculture and metalworking technology developed in North Africa from at least 2000 BC, outcompeted and intermarried with the Khoisan in the years after contact and became the dominant population of Southeastern Africa before the arrival of the Dutch in 1652. Furthermore, Khoisan have been the largest population throughout most of modern-human demographic history.
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