there was enough rainfall for them to pasture their sheep and cattle, es-
pecially in the coastal lowlands from the Buffels River southward and the
Fish River westward to the well-watered 'Cape peninsula. How and when
did pastoralism
reach that area?
In a book published in 1977, historian
Richard Elphick weighed the
evidence then available. He agreed with those who had surmised that
pastoralism
probably
started
in Southern
Africa when some hunter-
gatherers who lived in what is now northern Botswana acquired first sheep
and later cattle from pastoral
people further north.
That would have
sparked off a process that transformed the way of life of more and more of
the aboriginal hunting and gathering peoples of the western part of South-
ern Africa. Social groups would have, become larger than the hunting-
gathering bands and also more complex, as some individuals acquired
more livestock and power than others.Z?
Scholars
have subsequently
criticized
and elaborated
Elphick's
in-
formed conjectures. Linguists demonstrate that the language spoken by the
pastoralists had close affinities with a language spoken by hunter-gatherers
in northern
Botswana, Elphick's nuclear area. Archaeologists
have dis-
covered that pastoralism began in Southern Africa several centuries before