Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
History
First Footprints
To understand Botswana, one must look deep into the past. Here, history extends back
through the millennia to the earliest rumblings of humanity on the planet, when humans
took their first footsteps on the savannahs of southern and eastern Africa. Developing
rudimentary tools, these people hunted and gathered across the abundant plains, moving
seasonally over grassland and scrub in and around the extensive wetlands that once
covered the north of the country.
By the Middle Stone Age, which lasted until 20,000 years ago, the Boskop, the primary
human group in Southern Africa, had progressed into an organised hunting and gathering
society. They are thought to be the ancestors of the modern-day San.
Archaeological evidence and rock art found in the Tsodilo Hills place these hunter-
gatherers in shelters and caves throughout the region from around 17,000 BC. The paint-
ings that gave expression to the natural world in which they lived attest to their increasing
level of sophistication - clumsy stone tools gave way to bone, wood and, eventually, iron
implements. Better tools meant more efficient hunting, which allowed time for further in-
novation, personal adornment and artistic pursuits such as the emerging craft of pottery.
Such progress prompted many of these hunter-gatherers to adopt a pastoral lifestyle -
sowing crops and grazing livestock on the exposed pastures of the Okavango Delta and
the Makgadikgadi lakes. Some migrated west into central Namibia, and by 70 BC some
had even reached the Cape of Good Hope.
THE UNHAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH?
We've always found people in Botswana to be a pretty welcoming and cheerful lot, and their booming economy
suggests that there is much for them to be happy about. But not everyone agrees. In 2012 the New Economics
Foundation (
www.neweconomics.org
)
surveyed people in 151 countries in order to create the latest version of its
Happy Planet Index. Contrary to popular reporting in Botswana in the wake of the survey, the index doesn't meas-
ure people's day-to-day happiness. Instead, it reveals the efficiency with which countries convert their natural re-
sources into long and happy lives for their citizens while maintaining a small ecological footprint. In other words,
the countries that do well are those where people achieve long, happy lives without overstretching the earth's nat-
ural resources. Having languished in the lower regions since the index was created in 2006, in 2012 Botswana
came in…
last
.
