History Of South Africa And Globalization

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There seems to be general agreement among scholars that humankind had its earliest origins in Africa. South Africa is rich in fossil evidence of the evolutionary history of the human family, going back several million years. Modern humans have lived in the region for over 100,000 years. The mobile hunter-gatherers of the Khoekhoe and San created a wealth of rock art that tells much of what we know today about the indigenous people of South Africa. These groups, some 2,000 years ago, adopted a pastoral lifestyle herding sheep and, later, cattle. “Whereas the hunter-gatherers adapted to local environments and were scattered across the subcontinent, they sought out the pasturelands between modern-day Namibia and the Eastern Cape, which, generally, are near the coast” (Thompson 54). At around the same time, Bantu-speaking agro-pastoralists began arriving in southern Africa, bringing with them an Iron Age culture and domesticated crops. After establishing themselves in the well-watered eastern coastal region of Southern Africa, these farmers spread out across the interior plateau, where they adopted a more extensive cattle-farming culture. “Chiefdoms arose, based on control over cattle, which gave rise to systems of patronage and hence hierarchies of authority within communities” (Ezakwantu 4). These cultures, which were part of a broader African civilization, predate European encroachment by several centuries. Settlement patterns varied from the dispersed homesteads of the fertile coastal regions in the east to the concentrated towns of the desert fringes to the west. The farmers did not, however, extend their settlement into the western desert or the winter-rainfall region to the south-west. These regions remained the preserve of the Khoisan until Europeans put down roots at the Cape of Good Hope. This meant that the farmers were little affected by the white presence
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