Karoo - Great Karoo, Little Karoo

Dry steppe country in South Africa, from the Orange R down to the Cape; Karoo National Park covers 180 km²/70 sq mi of the arid region called the Great Karoo; established in 1979.

The Karoo is a semi-desert region of South Africa.

Great Karoo

The Great Karoo has an area of more than 400,000 square kilometers.

In recent history - less than two hundred years ago - large herds of antelope and zebras still roamed the Karoo's grass flats. The Hottentots and Bushmen, last of the Southern African Stone Age peoples, shared what they called the "Place of Great Dryness" (from which the name "Karoo" is derived).

During the Second Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 three Republican Commandos, reinforced by the rebels from the Cape Colony, conducted widespread operations throughout the Karoo. Fought both conventionally and as a guerrilla struggle over the Karoo's vast expanses, it was a bloody war of attrition wherein both sides used newly developed technologies to their advantage. Numerous abandoned blockhouses can still be seen at strategic locations throughout the Great Karoo;

Currently sheep farming is still the economic backbone of the Karoo with other forms of agriculture taking place in areas where irrigation is possible.

Little Karoo

As the name implies, the Little Karoo is the smaller (and more southerly) of the two Karoo sub-regions. Locally it is usually called the Klein Karoo, which is Afrikaans for Little Karoo. Although the boundaries of the region are not strictly defined, most people consider the western boundary of the Little Karoo to be in the region of Barrydale and the eastern boundary around Uniondale.

The main town of the region is Oudtshoorn.

This area was first explored by European settlers in the late 17th century, who encountered the Khoisan people living in a semi-arid area.