Who are the Khoisan?
Q: Who are the Khoisan?
A: The Khoisan is the name for two peoples of Southern Africa: the San and the Khoikhoi. The San are foraging bushmen, and the Khoi are a pastoral people previously known as the Hottentots.
Q: How many San are left in 2018?
A: As of 2018, between 90.000 and 100.000 San are left. Most of them live in Botswana and Namibia, with smaller minorities in South Africa, Angola, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Q: When did Bantu migrations reach Southern Africa?
A: The southward Bantu migrations from North and East Africa reached the region 700 years ago.
Q: What evidence suggests that the Khoisan were original inhabitants of Southern Africa?
A: The evidence of the Khoisan's original presence in South Africa is the distribution of their languages today. Khoisan language groups often have extreme differences in structure and vocabulary despite close proximity, which demonstrates a long period of settlement and co-evolution of languages in the same region.
Q: What did Charles Darwin write about regarding sexual selection among Khoisan people?
A: Charles Darwin wrote about sexual selection among Khoisan people in his book "The Descent of Man" (1882), commenting that their steatopygia evolved through sexual selection in human evolution, and that "the posterior part of the body projects in a most wonderful manner".
Q: How do genomic studies suggest when different human subgroups separated from one another?
A: Genomic studies use Y chromosome tests to determine when different human subgroups separated from one another because it changes little over time. This shows their last common ancestry.
Q: When was estimated to be when all living humans had a common ancestor?
A: According to genomic studies, all living humans had a common ancestor estimated to have lived 60,000 to 90,000 years ago
