Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
It is easy to die of thirst in the Kalahari Desert. Even the friendlier parts of
this vast southern African desert are covered with thorny acacia scrub.
Watercourses are rare and dry throughout much of the year. The land is
fl at and featureless, stretching out to the red and dusty horizon, so that it is
extremely easy to lose one's way and wander helplessly in circles under the
blazing African sun.
That is why I was glad I was in the company of a group of San women of
the Nxaro tribe when we ventured out into the bush-covered red plains of
the northern Kalahari.
In the last chapter we saw how modern humans fanned across Asia from
Africa, becoming incredibly resourceful in the process. But the peoples
they left behind in Africa were resourceful too. And, as we will see in this
chapter, the remote relatives of ours that the people of the Great Migration
encountered as they moved into Asia had their own resourcefulness. All of
them shared properties of our multitalented and protean species. Here, in
the topic's fi nal chapter, I will try to explore with you the essentials of the
humanness that we all share and how that essential humanness has evolved.
I will begin with the remarkable San, who never left Africa.
Hunters and gatherers
The San women, under the guidance of their leader, the tiny and cheerful
grandmother Xhing Xhai, fanned out looking for things to eat. Most of the
group were carrying babies, all were joking and gossiping. Between bouts of
laughter they scrubbed at their teeth with twigs. Despite these distractions,
within a few minutes they had begun to gather an astonishing amount of
food.
Most of the women quickly became laden with a growing collection
of herbs for cooking. Nxhwa found a collection of wild onions, lying just
beneath an unremarkable patch of soil. Several of the group gathered around
a thorn tree to dig up trul es, and quickly amassed a collection of these valu-
able fungi that would have fetched a king's ransom in Europe.
