San 1 Flashcards
What do we call the hunter gatherers who first lived in SA?
The San people
How did the first people in South Africa live?
By hunting, fishing and gathering food such as honey, nuts and berries.
How have we learnt about the way the San people lived?
Through paintings, objects and stories
How do stories tell us about the San?
The San passed down stories through the years. Theses stories tell us about their beliefs: the good characters in the stories shared and helped each other, and the bad characters were proud and selfish
What does nomads mean?
The San were nomads, which means that they moved around a lot and didn’t have permanent homes.
How have we learnt about the San through objects?
A few times a year San families would gather together in a cave. Archeologists have dug in theses a caves and found arrows, digging sticks, animal bones and the remains of fireplaces. These give us information on how the San lived.
How do the San paintings teach us about their way of life?
The San painted pictures of what they did in their lives on the walls of caves, and these can still be seen today. They painted pictures of what was important to them, and about their beliefs.
Why did the San live in communities of only 3 or 4 families?
Because there was not enough wild food to support bigger communities .
Who did most of the gathering in the San community?
The women
What did they have with them when they were gathering? What did they wear?
They carried small bags to carry their digging sticks and wore a cloak called a kaross which was used to carry food and firewood.
What was a digging stick used for ?
To dig up underground food such as roots and bulbs .
Why did the San never use up all the food in one place?
They knew that they had to leave some plants so that they could grow for the following year.
What did the San use when their waterholes had dried up?
Sip wells
How did they use sip wells?
Sip wells were deep holes scraped away until they reached damp sand. Then the San would put a long, hollow grass stem into the sip well and suck water through. This water was stored in ostrich eggs.
What did the San hunt with?
Bows and arrows.
What did the San use on their arrows to kill animals?
They made a poison out of plants, snake venom and larvae.
How often would the San men go hunting?
About 2 or 3 times a week.
How did the San community make decisions?
Nobody in the San community was richer or more powerful than anyone else. There were no leaders or chiefs, and decisions were made together.
Why was gathering around a fire so important to the San?
The fire was where families gathered to make weapons, ornaments and household goods. Meat was shared around the fire and there was dancing and story telling.
What did the San believe about the spirit world ?
They believed that in the spirit world people and animals were closely related. They believed that people could enter into the spirit worlds and capture the spirit power of an animal. This could cure illness,bring rain, or attract animals to hunt.
How did a person enter the spirit world? What wAs such a person called?
The people would all dance until someone went into a trance. This person was called a shaman.
What did the San believe was the animal with the most spirit power?
The eland
Why did the San have to know a lot about their environment ?
They had to know which plants could be eaten and which were poisonous. They had to know which plants could cure illness. They had to know which fruits and roots had water in them. They had to know where animals moved to at different times of the year.
Why are there 2 San figures on the South African coat of arms?
To recognise that the San were the first people to live in Southern Africa.
