Khoi-San

Khoisan

A 33-year-old San man from Namibia
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. Scholars have debated whether the Khoi had a separate origin from the San. 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. Such bands are now considered San. Similarly, the Bantu Damara people, who migrated south later, abandoned agriculture and adopted the Khoi economy. Large Khoisan populations continue to occupy 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). The 21st-century San and Khoi peoples resemble those represented by 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. They adopted the domesticated cattle and sheep of the Bantu, as some animals had escaped and reached them before the Bantu migrated into the area. The Bantu people, with advanced agriculture and metalworking technology, had developed in West Africa from at least 2000 BC. In the years after contact, they outcompeted and intermarried with the Khoisan, becoming the dominant population of Southeastern Africa before the arrival of Dutch colonists from the Netherlands in 1652.