species of its territory. The outcome of this territorial specialization was
diversity.From area to area, groups became increasingly different from one
another.
By the beginning of the Christian era, human communities had lived in
Southern Africa by hunting, fishing, and collecting edible plants for many
thousands of years. They were the ancestors of the Khoisan peoples of
modern times-the
peoples white settlers called Bushmen and Hottentots.
They contributed a high proportion of the genes of the "Coloured" people,
who constitute 9 percent of the population of the modern Republic of
South Africa. What is less well known is that they also provided a smaller,
but still considerable, proportion of the genes of the Bantu-speaking Af-
ricans, who form 75 percent ofthe population ofthe republic, and that they
have provided genes to the people whom governments officiallyclassified
as white and who amount to 13 percent of the modern population.'
The hunter-gatherers were small people with light brown or olive skins.
In 1811,
English traveler William J.Burchell described the members of a
band who lived in isolation in the arid interior of South Africa:
They were small in stature, all below five feet; and the women still shorter;
their skin was of a sallow brown colour.