The Antiquity of Hunting in southern Africa: The Past to the Present
George Pangeti[1] & Munyaradzi Manyanga[2]
Abstract
At any given time the basic ecological suitability of a region determines the types and range of animal species available. Southern Africa’s diverse habitats are known to have accommodated and sustained a wide variety of wild animal species to this day. Equally important in shaping the distribution are the human actions and policies over the years. It is an accepted fact that the history of hunting is as old as humanity itself. Thus any understanding of the current crop of wild animals and hunting practices in southern Africa needs to be related to the region’s ecology and history. While the number of animal species threatened by extinction has been increasing in southern Africa in recent times; southern Africa’s palaeo environments and history provide useful insights in formulating management approaches to the sustainable utilization of wild life resources.
Keywords
ecology, southern Africa, hunting, history, sustainable, extinction, management
Introduction
The practice of pursuing animals to capture or kill them for food, recreation, or trade of their products in southern Africa stretches millions of years into the past. Current palaeontological and archaeological evidence suggest that human ancestry in southern Africa dates as far back as 4 million years ago, and throughout these years humanity hunted for survival (see Phillipson 1985). This makes hunting one of the oldest traceable human activities on earth. Humanity’s daily energy requirements and well being demanded that the resources from the environment had to be exploited and it therefore naturally follows that hunting and gathering for food are activities that human kind has had to do. It is therefore not surprising that with time hunting not only served the subsistence needs of the people, but became integrated into people socio-political spheres. The products of hunting in the past were used for clothing, adornment, ornamentation, medicines and as raw materials for making implements. On the social sphere hunting became part of a society’s recreation and played an important role in defining the rights of passage from childhood to adulthood. Some of the ideals of modern day safari hunting therefore owe it to some of humanity’s past practices. Hunting has continued to be important in todays’ life as it has positively changed lives and transformed communities.
Southern Africa has always been home to a wide range of wild animals (see Smithers 1983). The region is known to have been rich in wild animals, which included most of the species that are found in the area today. Some of the animals today have become extinct (eg quagga) although this can not be directly linked to the many years of hunting. Early writers, missionaries and traders described southern Africa as the ‘nursery grounds’ for wild game and a hunter’s paradise (Wagner 1980; Elton 1873). It is the availability and abundance of a wide variety of wild animal species that attracted the early explorer hunters into the southern African interior. It is the same abundance and diversity of wildlife that continues to attract trophy hunters to southern Africa today.
Hunting during the Stone Age to 200 BC
A major preoccupation and source of food during this period was hunting. Stone Age hunter–gatherers perfected the art of hunting with spears, bows and arrows and trapping the animals. The animals hunted ranged from the small mice to the elephant. The evidence for hunting during this period comes from the numerous archaeological bone assemblages which show an obvious bias towards the wild animal species (see Crader 1997; Walker 1995). The evidence is corroborated by the vivid rock art which depict hunting and fishing scenes (plate 1a & b). Hunting was such an integral part of a hunter-gatherers belief system during which the hunted animals not only provided food but had other social meanings to the hunter gatherer life. This is depicted on the rock paintings which show a wide range of animals. The images depicted in the Rock Art of southern African emphasize the importance and respect accorded to the various animal species and the importance of the hunt in the artist’s social and religious spheres (see Lewis Williams 1981; Walker 1996).
The many centuries of interacting with the southern African environment made these Stone Age hunter gatherers masters of the environment during which they understood animals behavior and habitats that enabled them to successfully track animals during hunting. Their success with traditional weapons like poison arrows was remarkable and relied on their perseverance and remarkable ability as trackers, especially in their home environments (http://www.kalahari-trophy-hunting.com/hunting-definition-history.html). Ethnographic research among the hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari Desert has demonstrated that some small animals were caught using strings from plant or sinews. Holed animals were pulled from their holes using hooked sticks while others were hunted with dogs (animal aided hunting) (Tlou & Campbell 1997).
This hunting and gathering mode of production was wide spread throughout the world and changes from a predominantly hunting and gathering lifestyle to one of food production only becomes noticeable some 10 000 years ago. In southern Africa the transition appear to have taken place much later around 200 BC and some communities exclusively followed a hunting and gathering life style to recent times. A case in point are the vestigial hunter gatherer communities of the Kalahari, who until recently occupied the marginal zones of southern Africa and who depended heavily on their hunting skills for their livelihood to this day.
Hunting during the Iron Age c. AD 200-1800
The earliest evidence of an agro-pastoral society in southern Africa only appears around 200 BC. Carruthers (1995) argues that the advent of crop cultivation and pastoralism brought new imperatives to wildlife exploitation among the early farming communities of southern Africa. Communities who had adopted farming also spent a great deal of their time hunting to supplement their diet. The unpredictable seasons and the unreliability of farming in the savanna and semi arid regions of southern Africa made hunting an important aspect of these farming communities. Even when much of southern Africa had adopted agriculture, the so called pure farmers and pastoralists practiced hunting on a large scale (Steinhart 2006; Beach 1977; Manyanga 2001). Hunting not only provided means to subsistence, but was also a way of protecting crops from wildlife and livestock from the predators (Carruthers 1995). Surprisingly there has always been an undervaluation of the contribution and centrality of hunting among farmers and pastoralists in both the historical and ethnographic literature of southern Africa. Traditions among the farming societies of southern Africa emphasize the high importance of hunting in pre-colonial times, an aspect that some historians feel is an exaggeration (see Beach 1977). Among African societies cattle have other social functions other than just sources of meat. These were mostly slaughtered on special occasions. Shona life was not a daily special occasion hence a ready source of protein had to be the hunted meat. Pre colonial southern African man embarked on seasonal hunts some of which took several months only to return with large quantities of dried meat that families relied on.
Archaeological bone assemblages from researched Iron Age sites show that a significant portion of the animals exploited were wild and hunted (see Manyanga 2001; 2007; Plug 2000). The animal bone assemblages also included worked bone in the form of polished bone needles/awls, perforated bone shafts that was worn as a pendant, bone beads and ivory bangles (Manyanga 2001; Thorp 1984a; Voigt 1980). Some of the worked bone is typical of what some traditional healers in southern Africa are observed to wear as a necklace (Thorp 1984b). Oral traditions and travelogues note a multiplicity of hunting techniques before the introduction of the gun. Group hunts (mambure) were common during which animals were driven into pits or nets and then slaughtered with spears. The old age tradition of poisoned arrows to slow down animals is also reported to have been used. Smaller animals were hunted with dogs or caught in rope snares. Some oral traditions recount some daring hunters who would use speed and tact to kill beasts from close range with spears and axes.
By the 10th century a number of Iron Age societies in southern Africa were involved in trade with the Swahili and Arab traders on the east coast of Africa. Animal products that were in demand outside Africa included ivory, rhino horn, furs and furthers. The local communities in southern Africa hunted for these products in exchange for beads, dyed cloth, alcohol and other trinkets. The Swahili and Arab traders acted as middle men for Persian, Indian and Chinese merchants who later shipped these goods to their respective countries where they were in great demand. During the early years of the 16th century, developments on the southern tip of Africa brought new dimensions to the hunting practice in southern Africa. When the Dutch merchant ships docked on the Cape during the early part of the 16th century, the Dutch settlers struggled to build cattle herds hence the available local game was hunted and then dried to provide a long term supply of food. Once settled at the Cape, these Dutch settlers then set up farming and pastoral communities. However the establishment of British rule and the subsequent dissatisfaction with the British administration and the general hardships in the cape colony ecology led to a mass emigration of the Dutch settlers further north. During this period hunting become the primary and most important source of food.
Hunting was an important part of the 19th century southern African communities. Most writers of the 19th century compliment the exceptional hunting abilities of the inhabitants of this area (Elton 1873; Burke 1969, Wagner 1980). The product of the hunt was both for local consumption and for commercial purposes. The meat was an important part of the diet, while other products such as the bone, leather, horn and feathers were used as raw materials for utilitarian and decorative items. The product of the hunt was important in the everyday consumption of the household as well as in ceremonies. Hunting constituted a component of the social fabric of the community and a hunt formed part of the rites of passage for boys. Elton (1873) describes the extensive feasting during a ceremony when ‘boys become men’, where meat from animals such as zebra and buffalo and beer from sorghum formed the staple of the feast (Elton 1873, p. 6). Ostrich feathers and ivory were mostly for ornamentation and trade. Wagner (1980) alludes to the fact that some Limpopo Valley men were hired as specialist hunters of elephants by the Portuguese and Boer hunters in the 19th century.
International trade in hunted products is said to have blossomed in the 18th and 19th century, when the Delagoa Bay traders established contacts with southern Africa communities (Smith 1970, p. 276). 19th century traders’ and hunters’ records show that southern Africa was part of the East African coast trade network. Maggs (1986) points out that the written records from the east coast ports indicate that ivory constituted the most important commodity south of the Zambezi. Wagner (1980) describes extensive areas of northern South Africa, southern Zimbabwe and eastern Botswana as a hunter-trader colony. In the process, they traded with the local communities for ivory and grain with the locals acquiring European trade goods such as cloth, metals, beads and firearms. The Venda in particular are reported to have been skilled and specialized elephant hunters, and ivory from their territory is reported to have arrived at the Portuguese Delagoa Bay factories from the early 18th century (Smith 1970). During their travels, the early missionaries and merchants report the eagerness of the communities in southern African for trading especially in ivory, ostrich feathers and rhino horns. The trade of the 18th and 19th centuries was a market oriented trade, since it was linked to the demands of the outside world, especially the demand for ivory in Asia and Europe.
By the 19th century the entire area south of the Zambezi was full of hunters and traders who wanted a share of the seasonal elephant hunting plunder. Merchants from as far as the Cape Colony and Lourenco Marques (now Maputo) traveled as far as Lake Ngami (north western Botswana) and to the Sabi (eastern Zimbabwe) to hunt (Wagner 1980). The competition demanded that the white merchants had to use local knowledge in the form of local guides for more successful hunts. In the Shashi and Limpopo valleys the European merchants mostly used the skilled Tsonga, Venda and Sotho elephant hunters. It is clear by then that hunting guides had become a profession and a way by which the Africans could acquire foreign trade goods like cloth, guns and ammunition and beads. For the merchants, the ivory insured that their households could afford the luxuries of the time (tea, coffee, sugar, cloth) and guns and ammunition which was central in maintaining cohesion and military strength of the Boer community (Wagner 1980). In order to regulate commercial hunting in the Transvaal, the Transvaal republic enacted the 1858 hunt law. The level of entrepreneurship among the traders, missionaries, hunters who visited the southern Africa interior since the 16th century is reported to have been high. Even ‘men of the collar’ are reported to have actively participated in the hunting and trading. Well known missionaries like David Livingstone, Robert Moffat, John Moffat, Thomas Morgan are known to have carried a ‘bible in one hand and a gun for hunting on the shoulder’.