A collective term for the San (Bushmen) and Khoi (Hottentot) peoples of S Africa. The San were formerly hunter-gatherers, with a simple material culture but a rich oral literature and accomplished rock art. They once populated most of EC and S Africa, but today are marginalized in the Kalahari Desert of Botswana. Many now work for African or white cattle-farmers. The Khoi were traditionally pastoralists, and today are represented only by groups of mixed ancestry in Namibia. They were devastated by a smallpox epidemic in 1713, and their culture collapsed. There are no evident racial differences between the groups.
Khoisan is the name for two major ethnic groups of southern Africa. From the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic period, hunting and gathering cultures known as the Sangoan occupied southern Africa in areas where annual rainfall is less than 40 inches (1016mm)—and today's San and Khoi people resemble the ancient Sangoan skeletal remains. The Khoisan people were the original inhabitants of much of southern Africa before the southward Bantu migrations—coming down the east and west coasts of Africa—and later European colonization. The Khoisan languages are noted for their click consonants.
Over the centuries the many branches of the Khoisan peoples have been absorbed or displaced by Bantu peoples migrating south in search of new lands, most notably the Xhosa and Zulu, who both have adopted the Khoisan clicks and some loan words. The Khoisan survived in the desert or in areas with winter rains which were not suitable for Bantu crops.
Today it is in portions of the Kalahari Desert where San people live most nearly as their hunter-gatherer ancestors did.
According to neutral (autosomal) gene analysis, the Khoisan are similar to other sub-Saharan African populations. The study of their Y-chromosomes however shows that their original Y-haplogroup A is the oldest human lineage and could have diverged from the evolutionary tree of other humans more than 100 000 years ago (Knight et al. (2003) Y-haplogroup A is today present in various Khoisan tribes at frequency of 12-44%. The Khoisan also show the largest genetic diversity in mtDNA of all human populations. The San people themselves say they came first of all human beings, and while many cultures bear that same myth, each of themselves, not only genetic but archaeological evidence bears the Khoisan out. The distinct characteristics of all human varieties, from those of East Asia to those of Northern Europe and the Americas all may have beginnings in the physiology of the Khoisan people.
Physically the Khoisan, with their short frames (149-163 cm/4'9-5'4; Coon 1965), copper brown skin, tightly coiled "peppercorn" hair, high cheekbones, and epicanthic eye folds are quite distinct from the darker-skinned peoples who constitute the majority of Africa's population. They have moderately long legs with long bellies, which is a trait that sharply distinguishes them from surrounding Pygmy and Bantu populations having muscles with short bellies and long tendons (Coon 1965). Two distinguishing features of Khoisan women are their elongated labia minora and tendency to steatopygia, features which contributed greatly to the European fascination with the so-called Hottentot Venus. However, the physical differences between Khoisan and other peoples may be diminishing due to intermarriage.
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