in Africa

in Africa The following is an account by a member of an African pastoral group about its initial contact in with the !Kung San, a hunter-gatherer society living in the Kalahari desert: When we first came into this area, all we saw were strange footprints in the sand. We wondered what kind of people these were. They were very afraid of us and would hide whenever we came around. We found their villages, but they were always empty because as soon as they saw strangers coming, they would scatter and hide in the bush. We said: ‘Oh, this is good; these people are afraid of us, they are weak and we can easily rule over them.’ So we just ruled them. There was no killing or fighting. You will read more about encounters with hunter-gatherers in Themes and . F ROM T HE B EGINNING O F T IME T HEMES IN W ORLD H ISTORY