Biology Reference
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development, in Africa. The more recent drought of early 2011 in Africa seen by NASA
satellites over 9 years of imaging was related to a La Nina event in the Pacific and resulted in
food shortages for 11.5 million people, mostly in East Africa. Predictions are that droughts in
this area will continue to become more frequent.
On the Kavango river another officer and I sank in a kayak in the middle of the river where
there was a man eating crocodile; my medic and I had a close call with some beached
crocodiles on the sand bars; and two weeks after I left, fishing at the spot we often went to, my
medic was shot in the chest from across the river by a sniper, but fortunately survived.
Just to the south of where I had been stationed was the Kaudom Game Reserve and an area
marked off for the San Bushmen called Nyae Nyae (“Place without mountains, but rocky”,
22,000 square kilometers) where much research has been done on San Bushmen. In addition
wildlife has been restored there by the importation of some 3,000 head of game of various
types. Research by Sarah Tishkoff of this population has suggested that the oldest genetic
material and the oldest human population originate on the Namibian-Angola border among the
Bushmen and that they are related to Pygmies. Clearly, while the genetic material is the oldest,
they may have lived elsewhere but finally migrated to the present area because of population
pressures from other people. The reason much of the research on San has been concentrated in
this area was because after the initial research on the San was reported, later revisionist
papers argued that the San were encapsulated or pressurized by particularly the Tswana tribe
on the eastern side of the Kalahari Desert. The western side at Nyae Nyae was believed to
have existed in the present largely untouched style of living for 40,000 years. The two factions
have argued in the Kalahari debate over how relevant recent San hunter-gatherer lifestyles are
applicable to informing late Stone Age understanding. Some 30 miles south of where I was
stationed are the Tsodillo hills that contain some 4000 documented San Bushmen paintings,
believed to be 70,000 years old, often with religious overtones, and now a UNESCO protected
site. A unique feature is the python tunnel and rock. Many believe that the python was depicted
as being a deity and that the giraffe saved the python from a flood. At the entrance is a six-foot
high rock shaped like a python head and then the tunnel behind has hundreds of chips on the
wall. The effect is that with a fire burning at the entrance of the “tunnel” the python appears to
be moving. At the back of the tunnel was an opening that allowed a deceptive shaman to enter
and talk from the back using the tunnel as a megaphone. At the foot of the rock is a pile of
decorative red spearheads that would indicate some sort of ritual.
Little animal life remains to the south in the desert but to the north of Kaudom and up to the
Kavango River the Caprivi Strip wildlife is relatively plentiful and increasing. This area will
be part of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Park, some 400,000 square kilometers (153,
000 square miles), the size of Sweden. Namibia is still a very agriculture dependent economy,
particularly since money from diamonds has declined by 53%. Similarly, income from uranium
mining, of which Namibia is fourth largest exporter after Kazakhstan, Canada, and Australia,
has fallen after the Fukushima post tsunami disaster but with some 435 current nuclear plants
expected to increase in number by a further 500 (China is building 26, Saudi Arabia 16, and
maybe South Africa 5), demand should again increase again. Forty-three percent of the land is
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