Saturday, May 24, 2008

Gordon, Robert J. The Bushman Myth 1992

That the "bushmen" are a myth, concocted by English 19th Century anthropologists and revived in such as the film The Gods Must Be Crazy.

1: In a world envisioned by Nature Conservation, Bushmen would be allowed to remain provided that they "hunted" and "gathered" traditionally. Of course, most tourists would not come to see wild animals, but "Wild Bushmen"

10: Far from being "beautiful people living in primeval paradise", the Bushmen are in reality, the most victimized and brutalized people in the bloody history of South Africa

‑‑ Bushmen were not "Stone Age" relics, but normal traders and negotiators between different groups

15: Prichard Researches into the Physical History of Mankind (1851): "Writers on the history of mankind seem to be nearly agreed in considering the Bushmen, or Bosjemen of South Africa as the most degraded and miserable of all nations and the lowest in the scale of humanity. These people are so brutish, lazy, and stupid that the idea of reducing them to slavery has been abandoned".

18: Galton's travels: the foam of the wave of predatory capitalism

No comments: