FIRST PEOPLE, the lost history of the Khoisan

255pp., illus., maps, paperback, Johannesburg, 2022

Archaeologist Andrew Smith on early Southern African hunters and herders, from the Middle and Later Stone Age to recent times. His research draws on evidence from excavations, rock art, the observations of colonial-era travellers, linguistics and the study of the human genome and the latest academic research. 

Andrew Smith has excavated in the Sahara and Southern Africa and worked with Tuareg pastoralists in Mali, the Khoekhoen descendants in South Africa, and the Ju/'hoansi Bushmen in Namibia. He is an emeritus professor in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cape Town. His books include African Herders: Emergence of pastoral traditions; Pastoralism in Africa: Origins and development ecology and The Bushmen of Southern Africa: A foraging society in transition (with C. Malherbe, M. Guenther & P. Berens).