Who are the San bushmen?
The San people are the aboriginal people of Southern Africa. Their distinct hunter-gatherer culture stretches back over 20,000 years, and their genetic origins reach back over one million years. Recent research indicates that the San are the oldest genetic stock of contemporary humanity. Ten thousand years ago their exclusive domain stretched from the Zambezi to the Cape of Good Hope, from the Atlantic to the Indian Oceans. Three hundred years ago European colonists called them “untamable”. Now Southern Africa’s 110,000 remaining San face cultural extinction, living lives of poverty on the outer edges of society. Today they struggle to win back a foothold, along with their pride, in the lands they once roamed freely.
