|
Angola Hunters, Gatherers, Herders, and Others
Scattered throughout the lower third of Angola, chiefly
in the
drier areas, were small bands of people. Until the
twentieth
century, most of them were nomadic hunters and gatherers,
although
some engaged in herding, either in addition to their other
subsistence activities or as their chief means of
livelihood. Those
who survived turned, at least in part, to cultivation.
The bands living a nomadic or seminomadic life in
Cuando
Cubango Province (and occasionally reaching as far east as
the
upper Cunene River) differed physically and linguistically
from
their sedentary Bantu-speaking neighbors. Short,
saffron-colored,
and in other respects physically unlike the Nganguela,
Ovambo, and
Nyaneka-Humbe, they spoke a language of the !Xu-Angola or
Maligo
set of tongues referred to as Khoisan or Click languages
(the
exclamation point denotes a specific kind of click), whose
precise
relations to each other are not yet fully understood by
observers.
Several other hunting and gathering or herding groups,
the
members of which were taller and otherwise physically more
like the
local Bantu speakers, lived farther west, adjacent to the
Ovambo
and Herero. These people spoke Bantu languages and were
less
nomadic than the Khoisan speakers, but they were clearly
different
from the Ovambo and Herero and probably preceded them in
the area.
Data as of February 1989
|
