The !Kung People: A Unique Way of Life

Environment

The !Kung Location

The !Kung population is located in isolated areas of Botswana, Angola, and Namibia. These regions are located in Southern Africa. They refer to themselves as the Zhun/twasi, "the real people," and are also referred to as the !Kung San. The semi-arid region in which they live features some trees but is mostly brush and grass-covered low hills and flat spaces. Rainfall during the wet season varies from five to forty inches. Temperatures during the winter are frequently below freezing, but during the summer are well above 100F.

This harsh environment was avoided by most outsiders, but the !Kung are able to survive by adapting to their surroundings. They are very isolated and take on their environment by themselves without the help of outsiders. The villages, consisting of 10-30 people, are semi-permanent; once the water source dries up, the band has to carry their belongings to a new site where a reliable source of water can be located. This shortage of water in certain places creates added stress on the !Kung people. The huts they live in are small and built of grass with all doors facing the center, circling a large communal area where children play, women cook, and all family life except for sleeping takes place. A fire is burning in front of each hut at all times.

The arid region in which they live in is generally filled with different types of grass. This grass covers the low hills and flat plains that the !Kung live on. Also, the hills and flat spaces are accompanied by lots of brush. The !Kung are hunter gatherers, adapting to their semi-arid environment by gathering roots, berries, fruits, and nuts that they gather from the desert, and from the meat provided by the hunters. !Kung men are responsible for providing the meat, although women might occasionally kill small mammals. Game is not plentiful and the hunters sometimes must travel great distances. Meat is usually sparse and is shared fairly among the group when a hunter is successful.

Climatic Adaptations

One physical adaptation of the !Kung people are that they have developed darker skin to combat the large amounts of sunlight they are exposed to. They have this darker skin because the excess melanin protects the skin and absorbs more sunlight. If they had lighter skin, they would be more prone to skin cancer and would not be able to survive in the sun. Another physical adaptation they have developed is the ability to sustain stamina to hunt. They have to march very far distances to hunt big game and have developed stronger bodies to achieve this goal. It has helped them gather more food from big games because it is usually sparse.

The !Kung have also gained cultural adaptations that have helped them adapt to their environment. One cultural adaptation is the use of their plants and nuts in the environment to fuel nutrition. The !Kung have adapted their gathering skills to find the fruits, vegetables, and nuts that best provide a healthy nutrition so they can live better. In addition, the !Kung use their environment for their clothing and shelters. Their clothes are made out of animal skin, their shelters of grasses, branches and leaves of shrubs. This use of the environment makes it possible for the !Kung to live in an arid region. Lastly, they have developed many ways into how they gather water. Since their water sources are scarce, the !Kung have used ostrich eggs, which can hold up to one liter of water. Also, they get water from the roots of the shrubs in the desert and drip the water out of the roots. These adaptations have helped the !Kung live in the arid desert.

Language

A map showing dispersion of Khosan languages.

!Kung, also called Ju, is a language complex spoken in Namibia, Botswana, and Angola by the !Kung people. Together with the ǂHoan language, it forms the proposed Kx'a language family. !Kung constituted one of the branches of the putative Khoisan language family. Some unique characteristics of this language are the large number of clicks it has and the many different tones. Scholars say that the language has some of the most complex inventories of consonants and vowels in the world. The !Kung language is also in a written form. The San languages are written in a standardized alphabet based on Latin characters with special symbols for the click sounds unique to the Khoisan languages.  Some of these symbols are //, !, /.  Technical materials are available to explain the sounds these symbols represent. The use of special symbols to represent their clicks shows that the written and oral language was developed in some sort of unison. The fact that they have written language shows that their language is intricate and at high level.

Gender Roles

I can only identify two specific genders in the !Kung culture, male and female genders. One of the defining roles of the male gender is hunting. They are responsible for hunting game and bringing their kill to the band. The !Kung women are responsible for the majority of the food and for the care of the children. The women do the majority of the gathering, such as gathering water, nuts, fruits, and firewood. Both men and women are very good at foraging the edible foods available in their environment. I think the gender roles are not very strict because sometimes the lines are crossed. For example, some women hunt small animals for their meat, not just the men. Also, both genders forage for edible plants and nuts in their environment. I don’t think there are any negative repercussions if one gender crosses over and fulfills another gender’s role. I think if the women were to fulfill some of the men’s hunting roles, they would leave their duties of child rearing and gathering to the men, which would make it impossible for these to get done. It would have a negative consequence on the society as a whole. These gender roles are taught to the young of the culture at a very young age. The young women in the tribe are with their mothers all the time, seeing how they forage for edible foods and watching them do their customary duties. The men learn at a very young age from the older, wiser men of the tribe on techniques of hunting and survival. These are very important traits for a young one to learn because they need to have these traits perfected for when they are older. Culture has the strongest influence on the gender roles of the !Kung. The roles are passed on by the different generations of the culture. But, some roles are biologically inherited for the women, such as child rearing and managing the food. These both have a huge impact on the way things are done in the culture. I think the cultural aspect of gender role identity is more useful to !Kung.

After reading the short passage about the “intersexed child,” I feel that the protagonist would fit in relatively well in my culture. Since there is some overlap in gender roles, it would make sense that an “intersexed” child could fulfill the duties of both genders. They could gather food, look after children, and hunt small animals for their meat. I think this would not be seen as normal to the culture, but they could fit into the gender roles of the culture.

Subsistence

The !Kung culture can be identified as being a hunter gatherer based culture for subsistence. They forage for their food and they hunt for game to get meats. They move from place to place based on the amount of water they have, so they can’t be an agrarian based society. They have a unique ability of finding the edible plants in their environment and eat them for food. There is no evidence that they are moving towards or adapting to a new type of subsistence pattern.

They made food items in the !Kung culture are local fruits, vegetables, nuts, and game. They find their fruit and nuts from different types of plant producing items that are near to them in their environment. If they move to a new place, they must adapt to the food that is available to them. The !Kung has a remarkable skill of finding the edible items for their diets. The men of the tribe hunt big game and use every part of the animal for food, shelter, and other things that they need. These items are all available year round and depend on the place the !Kung have settled.

The subsistence roles are split up based on gender. The men of the culture are assigned to hunting for food and going on trips to hunt big game. They have the responsibility of getting the meat to the tribe and making sure it is split evenly to each tribe. The women pick the fruit and nuts from the shrubbery around the environment. They then will prepare the food and serve it after it has been gathered and prepared.

The general nutritional status of the culture is that they are very healthy and have a wide variety of nutrients. They receive adequate nutritional intake because they do not rely on one certain crop or food. They have many different edible plants that they can find and eat. Also, the culture eats meat from different game that adds nutritional value to their diet. The fact that they are moving little by little to different places makes them more fit and healthy for living on the run.

Economic Systems

The !Kung culture does not produce any surplus in food items. They use everything that they forage for and hunt. They need everything that they find because they do not grow crops on their own or import foods from big corporations. In addition, the culture does not exhibit a specialization of labor. All the women pretty much have the same jobs that they must fulfill to help the community. They all care for the children, the food, and they due chores. The men all have to hunt and gather food. It is not different based on the social level or any special person. The !Kung does redistribute the goods that the tribe has gathered from hunts and forages. They all just rely on the goods that they can get from the environment and use those as needed. When a man comes back with a good kill from hunting, he will share the kill fairly with everyone in the tribe. The !Kung does not have any type of currency or participate in trade. They have been kept unchanged for many years and do not benefit from the inclusion of outsiders.

Marriage

The majority of marriages are monogamous, normally arranged by senior members of the kinship group.  It is preferred to marry cousins, but there is a complicating generational naming system, which can limit cousin choices by naming cousins as siblings in certain cases. More often than not, the first marriage of the !Kungs are arranged by the parents of the bride and groom. The average age of marriage ranges between 12-16 for girls and 18-25 for boys. The arrangement of !Kung marriages usually begins with the mother of the boy approaching the mother of the girl to propose a marriage. If the girl’s family is amiable and concedes to the proposal, a formal engagement is then secured with the conferring of Kamasi (a type of gift that is explicitly “exchanged between the parents of” the “prospective brides and grooms”). Thereafter, both families would frequently engage in a series of gift exchanges, lasting over a decade-long period, prior to the actual marriage of their children.

The !Kung have a strict incest taboo of marriage to an immediate family member. They are also not allowed to marry their first or second cousin. Also, they are prohibited from marrying someone who has the same name as their parents or siblings. The !Kung are a matrilocal society. This means the couple lives with or near the wife’s parents. They practice uxorilocality for the bride service period, which lasts until the couple has produced three children or they have been together for more than ten years. At the end of the bride service period the couple has a choice of which clan they want to live with.

Kinship

The ǃKung classify everyone who bears the same name as close kinsmen as if they were proper relatives. If a ǃKung man's sister is called Kxaru (a common female name), then all women named Kxaru are his "sisters." A ǃKung man may not sit too close to his sisters or tell sexual jokes in their presence, and he cannot marry them. The same rules apply to his sisters' namesakes. To the ǃKung, such customs identify "true" and not merely metaphorical kinship. The ǃKung believe that all namesakes are descended from the same original namesake ancestor, and in effect they treat the status of namesake as a genealogical position, like father, mother, brother, sister, son or daughter.

There are hereditary leaders, sometimes considered chiefs, but they have limited authority.  The chiefs have some duties such as dividing up the meat share from a hunt, and the chief does not get more meat then anyone else. Traditionally social order was enforced by ridicule, dispersal (forced separation) and sometimes even execution.  Infractions are now handled through district councils or government courts.  There was no formal military system.  The San peoples were generally pacifist, though minor skirmishes might occur. The inheritance patterns do match the descent lines for this culture. The Eskimo (Inuit) kinship system is how the !Kung follow naming patterns in their culture. They use terms such as brother, sister, father, and mother for each individual.

Social Organization

The !Kung culture is generally egalitarian except for the chief of the clan. The chief has some very important roles and leadership opportunities for the clan he represents. Not all the members have equal social power, as seen by the chief. There is really no mobility in this culture, except if a man moves into the role of the chief. They are classified as a chief through hereditary leadership and are passed on the power by the generation before them.

Political Structure

The !Kung tribes practice an egalitarian political organization. Politically, each tribe has an uncentralized political system where each member of the tribe is equally in line with the next citizen. Each !Kung tribe has their own sense of political structure and wealth is determined by the tribe according to the amount of meat and food the hunters and gatherers bring in and distribute to the tribe. There are no set leaders in the !Kung society and everyone works for each other. Their core value of modesty allow for this equality among tribe members.

An !Kung elder.

If there is ever a necessity to make a major decision among the tribe, the tribe gathers together and discusses the matter, then makes a decision as a whole. Everyone in the tribe must agree with a decision in order for the tribe to act. However, the wisdom of the elders is highly resourceful to the tribe because that is all they have to offer to the tribe.

The Role of Violence

One role of violence that plays an important part in the !Kung culture is the hunting aspect of their culture. Men are trained to hunt at a young age and carry out the hunting duties of big game for the tribe. This is a very positive thing for the tribe, as it is a major source of food that they need to keep their bodies healthy. Another role of violence in the !Kung culture is the fact that European settlers have been interacting in their culture. This has had a negative effect on the !Kung. These settlers have even been killing the !Kung for sport, which is very sad to see for this culture.

Religion

!Kung are traditionally tribal religionists and are very closed to Christianity.  They believe celestial bodies (sun, moon, morning star, and the southern cross) are symbols of divinity.  They believe the praying mantis is a divine messenger and when one is seen, diviners try to determine the current message. Other animals also have spiritual significance for them.  They also believe that dancing near a sacred fire will give them the power to heal.  Their spiritual leaders are diviners and healers.  They believe ancestors are involved in curing rituals, but they do not revere the dead as the Bantu peoples do.  This practicing of religion is very important to the !Kung culture.  I believe they would not be able to live without their religion, as they would not be able to seek guidance from their divine believers.

Art

The !Kung culture express their art in the form of rock paintings and beadwork. Although the true meaning and origin of these rock paintings is subject to interpretation, many have agreed that they originated from the !Kung because of the close ties to !Kung culture depicted within them. These paintings portray many important aspects of !Kung life, such as the hunting of the eland antelope and the ritual curing dance known as the “trance dance.” Probably the most important art form of the !Kung is their beadwork. Constructed by women, these beads are made from ostrich eggshells. These beads are presented and famed during the “trance dance.”

The !Kung use music as a way of expressing their appreciation of their God. The !Kung say that the songs are given to them by the great God and that they contain n/um, “a mystical potency capable of curing that is also found within medicine men and fire. The repetitive clapping and stomping, and the rhythmic quality of the song has an almost hypnotic effect, which leads the men into a trance-like state.

The !Kung have dance called the “trance dance” that is very sacred to them as a form of art. They use the dance as a way of curing the sick, and it is done very frequently. Once they enter this trance, they may run about in a frenzy, laying their hands on each person to draw out the illness and “fling it beyond the reaches of the clearing.” This art form of dance is considered to be directly tied to God and healing powers, concepts within the superstructure of !Kung culture.

Conclusion

The !Kung have been living a culture that has not changed for many years. The outside world, specifically European settlers, has interfered in a very negative sense. They have killed the !Kung people for sport and have disrupted their natural way of life to the point where some of the culture has died. I feel like the !Kung culture is not thriving or near extinct, but in the middle of the pack. I think they are able to stay alive because of their trusted rituals and unique ability to find resources in their environment. I think they might have trouble finding water in the future as the total amount of water goes down. This culture has not been influential at all in the modern culture that I can find.

Bibliography

http://www.ucc.uconn.edu/~epsadm03/kung.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/!Kung_language

http://orvillejenkins.com/profiles/kung.html

http://ksuanth.wetpaint.com/page/!Kung+Political+Organization

http://ksuanth.wetpaint.com/page/!Kung+Art