Cultural Practices of Ethnic Groups: Global Differences & Civilization - Research Paper

Introduction

In the entire globe, there exist quite distinct groupings of people by the setting and cultural foundations. In every town, there is a manner in which its occupants carry out their regular daily duties besides the time to time trends of life. Similarly, the case is so much intensified when it comes to rural and remote based cultural practices of various ethnic groups. As at now, most of such ethnic groups have undergone some degree of civilization as a result of influence from foreign cultures and technological advancements. However, some of those groups have not faced the external threshold force with tolerating influence on their well-reckoned culture as a result. They have instead strengthened the culture and embraced it in more diversified ways concerning the governments in power and whether it is interested in supporting such ritual and ethical practices under the law and human rights. In this research paper, a keen observation of one of the marginalized groups in the continent of Africa called 'Khoisan,' shall be discussed under various subheadings.

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Historical Background

The Khoisan people were amongst the very first people to have their foot steeped in and settled in South Africa. The Khoisan has, therefore, had a rich history that is worthy of capturing one's attention to study. Well before the principal pioneers touched base on South African shores, there were different gatherings of individuals who spread out meagerly over the land. These individuals, today called the Khoisan, were gifted seeker gatherers and migrant ranchers who lived off the land. But then, disregarding their soonest nearness on the land, they're among the nation's most abused individuals (Schuster et al., 2010).

What's more, even after the fall of Apartheid in South Africa, they are among the most overlooked also. The name Khoisan is a mix of Khoikhoi and San, two gatherings who had comparable societies and dialects. Be that as it may, they were in no way, shape, or form a homogeneous people. They, by and large, existed in the seclusion of one another and utilized various methods to make due off the land. The Khoi were talented in the act of travelling peaceful farming. The kept up enormous crowds of cows all through the nation, and proof recommends that they relocated to South Africa from Botswana. Some descended from the Kalahari to the Cape, while others wandered southeast towards South Africa's high-lying lands.

The intrusion of Europeans in the mid-1600s had things began to turn out badly for the Khoisan. Arriving pilgrims made a case for land recently utilized by these gatherings. A few pilgrims put limits and fences around their recently gained properties to counteract the section of individuals through their property. Numerous pioneers aggrieved the general population straightforwardly. The disturbance to touching examples, the misuse of regular assets, the spread of imported sicknesses and different clashes directly affected the number of inhabitants in the Khoi and the San. Over the consequent years, their populaces went into a sharp decrease.

Moreover, the entry of Apartheid numerous years after the fact further stifled the Khoisan, and they rapidly wound up one of the nation's most undermined social gatherings. Environmental change additionally directly affected the Khoisan. Twenty-two thousand years prior, when they previously lived in Southern Africa, the land was wet, fruitful and stuffed brimming with wild game. The majority of this began to dry out as the area ended up more blazing and drier.

The San, then again, had regions covering locales as far away from home as Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Lesotho. They are talented seeker gatherers whom most consider being the principal individuals living on the land referred to today as Botswana and South Africa. San individuals were semi-travelling, regularly moving to new districts when water or creatures wound up meagre. Archaeologists have an estimate that the pastoral Khoi Khoi and hunter-gatherer San were living in Southern Africa for approximately two thousand years. Archaeologists have uncovered artwork and implements believed to be among the oldest in the world. Though rock art is rare, there are still places in Southern Africa where it is visible.

Main Activities

One might think that hunters and gathers no longer do exist. However, currently, the hunting and gathering practices amongst the Khoisan community do still exist. Besides, its existence, the rate at which is presently carried out nowadays has decreased significantly as compared to the past few decades. Such changes were brought about t by the European colonisation, which interfered with their way of doing things. However, changes in climatic conditions have also contributed in a paramount way to the intensity under which such activities used to occur. For example, the gathering of fruits has been crippled due to the lack of consistency rains, which supported the extensive bearing fruits and other useful grains in the forests (Barnard, 1992). The hunter-gatherers of Southern Africa are individuals known as the San and Khoi-Khoi. Archaeologists have evaluated that hunter-gatherers have been around in Southern Africa for roughly 11 000 years. The name 'San' originates from the Khoi-Khoi word 'San,' which signifies 'individuals who accumulate wild sustenance' or 'individuals with no dairy cattle.' In South Africa, we utilise the name 'San' to depict the indigenous individuals of Southern Africa who live or used to live by chasing and assembling. Through archaeological research and San oral history or narrating, we realise that there was a great deal of San gatherings living in the Southern Kalahari. Archaeologists accept that the San were the relatives of the first Homo sapiens who had lived in South Africa for in any event 150 000 years. That must be one exceptionally large and enormous family tree! Today regardless we see proof of social practices that are being utilised by Southern African seeker gatherers. Models are the creation of ostrich eggshell dabs, shell adornments, the bow, and bolt and shake artistry.

Language and Skin Color

The Khoisan language is mainly composed of clicks and other consonants, which makes it, a unique language. Their most unmistakable phonetic trademark is the first and broad utilization of click and consonants, a component which has spread through social and etymological contact into various Bantu (Niger-Congo) dialects, for example, Xhosa, Zulu, and Sotho in South Africa and Gciriku (Diriku), Yei (Yeye), and Mbukushu in Botswana and Namibia-and into Dahalo, a Cushitic (Afro-Asiatic) language of Kenya (Dimmendaal, 2008). The semantic utilisation of snaps, regardless of whether unique or obtained, is limited to these couple of African dialects, with one special case: Damien. This custom vocabulary of the Lardil of Australia contains a few words with snaps together with other impossible to miss sounds, yet the utilisation of snaps is restricted, and they have a symbolic incentive notwithstanding their phonetic capacity.

On the other hand, the Khoisan bears a unique skin colour completion, which is generally categorised as pale-yellow colour. Such a colour makes the group appear differently from the other African people, who are extensively dark. The change in the skin colour is suggested to have been as a result of various hazardous encounters with the community over a long period.

Special Skills and Knowledge

Many consider the Khoisan to have the absolute most staggering learning and bits of knowledge into wild creatures and the condition that they possess. Their capacity to separate supplements from apparently subtle plants and get by in commonly bone-dry or ungracious situations is impressive. Many have thorough learning about the restorative estimations of plants, and they utilise common things to fix several illnesses without a current prescription. On the chasing side, they had a mind-blowing capacity to tune into their environment; to follow creatures over the land and bring down wild game with a little toxic substance tipped bolt.

The community can be said to have been one of the most successful cultures on the field of medicinal endeavours which saw the community make clever use of the herbs and shrubs to provide cure to their illness and health complexities. In one way or the other, the community has also contributed in a paramount towards the discoveries of various medicinal herbs which is widely used in the field of medicine up to date.

Cultural Jeopardy

However, important this community has been to the Southern African Country and communities at large, their culture seems to be hanging on a thin thread that can get chopped off at any moment. Firstly, the government has not been able to acknowledge and approve the legibility of the Khoisan language as important and thus seems to neglect the community based on their language. Several demonstrations have been conducted by the community in front of government offices, but they have seemed to bear unsatisfactory results in the very end. Such signals and others that are categorised as minor, threaten to kill this beautiful culture that in the new future, most of the unique aspects about the community may become extinct.

References

Barnard, A. (1992). Hunters and herders of southern Africa: a comparative ethnography of the Khoisan peoples (No. 85). Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from https://books.google.co.ke/books?hl=en&lr=&id=2nBx83jMc48C&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&dq=the+khoisan+in+south+africa&ots=w2aKHqacN3&sig=eQQfvhTqSSy2sb3EmJy9DRr3LeA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=the%20khoisan%20in%20south%20africa&f=false

Dimmendaal, G. J. (2008). Language ecology and linguistic diversity on the African continent. Language and linguistics compass, 2(5), 840-858. Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1749-818X.2008.00085.x

Schuster, S. C., Miller, W., Ratan, A., Tomsho, L. P., Giardine, B., Kasson, L. R., ... & Alkan, C. (2010). Complete Khoisan and Bantu genomes from southern Africa. Nature, 463(7283), 943. Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08795