Bushmen of the Kalahari

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In South-West Africa lies the Kalahari Desert wherein live one of the most ancient living societies on Earth, the Bushman. This ancient but small people, in populace and in stature, are one of the few remaining hunter-gatherer societies in existence. Due to their nomadic lifestyle they are often hard to find in the vast desert; however, in the 1950s Elizabeth Marshall Thomas and an anthropological Euro-American group of scientists and researchers were able to make contact and live for a time with various tribes or bands of Bushman. Her first-hand experience and knowledge of this Kalahari people allowed Elizabeth Thomas to publish the book, The Harmless People, depicting the economic interdependence and common ideologies of this unique group. This distinctive blend of economic interdependence and common ideology, also known as organic and mechanical solidarity respectively, provided anthropologist with the ability to study human relationships and functions in one of the oldest known societies. One of the central aspects of the different Bushman societies that connect organic and mechanical solidarity is the importance of hunting in their day to day lives. Hunting features heavily in the process of becoming a man, marriage, religion, and social standing. Hunting is the quintessential component of becoming a man in the Bushman culture. Hunting is very important because it makes a boy a man, and eligible for marriage. The transition from boyhood to manhood in virtually all ancient and modern societies is marked by an important time or event. In American society we are considered to have achieved manhood or womanhood upon reaching the 18th anniversary of the day of our births. In other societies womanhood comes when the female begins menstruating. For the Bushman, one was not considered a man unless he was able to shoot and bring back a buck (Thomas, 147).
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