People in the Living Museum of the Ju/’hoansi San, Grashoek, Namibia.
Oleksandr Rupeta/NurPhoto via Getty Images
There are several reasons why ethical conduct in scientific research is so important.
Cakase Kruiper, a San elder, explains her connection to the cosmos in the film !Aitsa.
© Dane Dodds and Med_Cine
To the ǀXam and San people, being in the world as a person includes “the sky’s things” - an understanding of and deep connection with the cosmos.
A facial reconstruction of one of the Sutherland Nine, a woman named Saartje.
Reconstruction by Dr Kathryn Smith/Professor Caroline Wilkinson
Hopefully more curators and custodians of repositories of human skeletal remains will attempt to redress some of the wrongs of the past.
Images of one-horned rain-animals have been found in the northern parts of the Eastern Cape province.
Courtesy David M. Witelson
Some explorers believed they had found unicorns depicted on rocks. The truth behind the paintings is far more interesting.
After colonial contact, indigenous Africans acquired horses and guns, and raided settlers as a means of resistance.
Courtesy Sam Challis
Changes in southern African rock art reflect the mixing of groups of people after they came into contact with each other.
Both the Khoi and the San believed in a mythical animal, resembling a cow, whose horns were thought to have medicinal attributes.
Rodger Smith
The medicine container was found in a painted rock shelter. A radio carbon date of the horn container places it at around AD 1461-1630.
Madosini performing in Johannesburg in 2021.
Oupa Bopape/Gallo Images via Getty Images
The queen of Xhosa music has passed away. She reinvigorated ancient Xhosa cultural traditions through performance and teaching.
A replica of the famous Linton Panel.
Courtesy Rock Art Research Institute/Origins Centre
A new exhibition in Johannesburg focuses on the beliefs and paintings of the San people.
An aerial view of members of the Herero and Nama communities taking part in the Reparation Walk in 2019.
Christian Ender/Getty Images
The problem is that communities who continue to be most affected by the violent past have not been involved in negotiations.
Graffiti artist Falko Starr finishes a mural in the Cape Flats area of Cape Town.
GIANLUIGI GUERCIA/AFP via Getty Images
It’s been in existence since the 1500s but the Kaaps language, synonymous with Cape Town, has never had a dictionary until now.
The San associated elands with rain, and the power to influence game during a hunt.
Henk Bogaard/Shutterstock
In several other parts of the world, people used the bones of animals that were important within their respective cultures to make tools.
Detail of the ceiling paintings of the San people in the Drakensberg, South Africa.
Courtesy © Stephen Townley Bassett
The team from Wits University returned to a well-known ceiling panel in the Maloti-Drakensberg mountains, armed with new knowledge about the beliefs of the San people who made the paintings.
A beader in Botswana strings ostrich eggshell beads.
Pixabay.com
A survey of San ostrich eggshell beads - a common find at archaeological sites - paints a bigger picture of hunter-gatherers, herders and shifting cultural tradition.
Je'nine May/UCT
Through science, art and technology, we are able to reconstruct the faces of the dead based on their remains. The researcher who did this work for descendants in Sutherland explains the process.
SutherlandReburials Jannetje.
When the University of Cape Town discovered skeletons in its archive that had been unethically obtained and used, they set about restoring justice to the bones and the community they came from.
Naron women and children wearing ordinary dress - the photograph was taken in 1919.
Fourie collection/ Museum Africa
Contrary to the colonial view, Bushmen of southern Africa had a complex and meaningful practice of dress.
Participants map out an ideal future for their community.
Authors supplied
Inclusive innovation processes could be extremely valuable to low-income and disadvantaged communities in South Africa.
This image, taken by a member of Namibia’s San community, reveals a great deal about representation.
Tertu Fernandu
Marginalised Namibians should be encouraged to take up cameras to document their lives – on their own terms.
The San’s arrows may look dainty, but when tipped with poison they are lethal for hunting.
Fred Dawson/Flickr
The early use of poison is one more indicator of an advanced repertoire of behavioural and technological traits that have characterised our species from the earliest times.
A woman arrives for Nelson Mandela’s memorial. The idea of a rainbow nation has been futile.
EPA/Jim Hollander
Despite the noble goals of the new South Africa and its ideals of racial harmony, racial tensions remain a major problem in the country. Prejudice and bigotry persists even in universities.