Kung Essay Research Paper The Kung who

Kung Essay, Research Paper

The !Kung who are called Bushman or San live in and around the Kalahari desert. The Kalahari is one of the largest, continuous sand surfaces in the world, and unlike other deserts, the Kalahari is considered semidesert because the rainfall amounts vary from six to eighteen inches per year (Marshall, 1976, p.62). This semidesert environment shapes the lifestyle and habits of the !Kung. These people endure enormous hardship because of the bleak conditions in the desert, but the desert does provide the !Kung with sufficient food in the form of edible plants high in water content and the animals they hunt. The Kalahari desert receives most of its rain in the months of January through March while the rest of the year is virtually dry. Rain in the desert is not predictable, which means that some regions can receive enormous amounts of rain and other regions none. The !Kung depend on scattered waterholes for their water, and there are three types of waterholes: 1) permanent, 2) semi-permanent, depending on sever droughts, and 3) temporary waterholes which are filled only when it rains. The !Kung are nomadic primarily for environmental reasons, and they have incorporated beliefs pertaining to the environment into their social behavior which serves to bond and strengthen their ties to the land and to themselves. The !Kung are hunters and gathers, which means they have no permanent dwellings. They move seasonally from waterhole to waterhole, but upon returning to a water hole they do not use the same camps because of certain taboos regarding prosperity. They do not reuse abandoned camps because they believe when you make new fires that it is associated with …”fresh hope, fresh chance for good fortune. To build new fires on old sites might nullify the fresh chance and invite misfortune (Marshall, 1976, p.79)”. The !Kung camp in an area that has all the needed resources such as water, plants, and animals to hunt, and they set up this new encampment about a half mile from the waterhole for protection from predators that share the water. The !Kung also move for social reasons to visit other !Kung or to collect or leave individuals in another area. According to Marshall in her book, The !Kung of the Nyae Nyae, the !Kung associate in what are called bands. This grouping is formed from blood relatives as well as through marriage and they generally live in a single settlement and move together for at least part of the year. At the core of each of these camps are two, three, or more siblings and/or cousins, both male or female, who are acknowledged to be owners of a territory’s resources. These owners are related only by blood lines. Each of these territories, or n!ore, contains food and water resources necessary for basic subsistence of the band. These bands are composed of separate families who are related by blood and marriage, but membership within the band is not fixed. People move from one band to another through marriage, death, or relation to another band. Each of these bands numbers from eight to forty-two members, according to the resources of the band’s territory, and no band has a higher rank over another in terms of influence and power. These bands serve the dual purpose of maintaining kinship ties and the necessity of a large group to hunt and gather enough food to survive. Gathering and HuntingThe division of labor is based on age and sex with the adults providing food for dependent children under 15 years and for the aged. Hunting is done by men and gathering by women. The women gather plants and roots every day and these expeditions can last an hour to several hours. While on these gathering trips the women consume part of the food they gather, and the rest is brought back to camp where it is pooled together and then redistributed among the band. Marshall states that “… the ratio of meat to vegetables to be 25 percent meat to 75 percent vegetables (Marshall, 1976, p. 93)”, so gathering vegetable products is extremely important to the !Kung’s survival. The !Kung could not live without vegetation because it offers them the necessary supplies to make what is needed. They construct their huts out of grass and branches; use flexible wood to make bows; use strong sticks for digging; and carve utensils and bowls out of wood. Wood is an essential material that the !Kung need to survive. Not only do the !Kung produce objects from wood, but trees are the home for beetles from which the !Kung extract venom for their arrows. Plants and trees are used for medicinal purposes as well as being used in rituals and ceremonies for protecting people from bad luck. Gathering is done primarily by the women while hunting is done only by the men. Men are not excluded from gathering, whereas women are shunned from hunting because the !Kung “…believe that femaleness weakens the hunter’s prowess and endangers his chance of success, and they practice certain avoidances for keeping femaleness apart from hunting (Marshall, 1976, p. 97).” Women are not allowed to touch the bows and arrows of men, especially when women are menstruating. They believe that women generate a certain weakness that influences hunting during this time, while the !Kung men are believed not “…to endanger the fertility of the land or the growth of the plant foods or the effectiveness of the gatherers (Marshall, 1976, p. 97).”Every adult woman is accountable for gathering enough food for herself, her family, and her de