Where Do The San People Live?

The San people are an indigenous population of an ancient culture of people that have lived in the Kalahari desert for thousands of years. There are now few left but there is a small population that lives in the protection of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana.

The population is around 3000 people who are well adapted to living in the harsh conditions provided by the desert landscape. Their diet consists mainly of small animals and insects and not, as many people would think, the larger herbivores that roam the grasslands in huge herds. The hunting parties of the San people do occasionally hunt big game but this is for social and cultural display rather than to provide food. The tribe does not consider a San boy to be fully a mature man unless he has killed a herd animal.

The traditional nomadic lifestyle of the bushmen is disappearing fast as modern technology encroaches from the wider world and cultivation and farming activities encroach locally. Farming has done great damage to the natural ecosystems – in 1983, 50 000 wildebeest died in one year because their migration routes had been cut off by farmer's fences.