Kalahari:
I have always felt warmly toward the Kalahari Bushmen, since long before the marvelous movie “The Gods Must Be Crazy.” Someone told me that the proper term is now, “Koisan.” That may have snapped something in my soul. There is a nice little well paying career called being a social activist; one begs money and then uses it to push some social agenda in order to be able to beg more. When somebody tries to push me around by claiming the high moral ground, I now work under a presumption of hypocrisy. In fact the Bushmen have been pushed off their ancient lands and confined to high rise condos. That elicited no outcry.
Anyway, they are some of my favorite people. And some new information has come to light. Their numbers are in decline. (Shrinking Tribe Once Most Populous SCIENCE vol. 346 no. 6215 December 12, 2014 page 1272 referring to http://scim.ag/Kalatribe) That’s most sad, but so are everybody else’s; I’d like to save everybody, with emphasis not on self righteous professional social activists but yes, them as well.
Recent studies have shown that their lineage is very ancient indeed and, somewhere between 30,000 and 120,000 years ago when the rest of humanity was in serious decline the Bushmen were flourishing. Of course the ever-trendy article says it was all due to climate change, but I think a reasonable and prudent person might think that the Bushmen flourished by doing what they still (until their government moved against them) did best recently; they kept their lines of descent in order.
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