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The Harmless People
“A study of primitive people which, for beauty of . . . style and concept, would be hard to match.” — The New York Times Book Review
In the 1950s Elizabeth Marshall Thomas became one of the first Westerners to live with the Bushmen of the Kalahari desert in Botswana and South-West Africa. Her account of these nomadic hunter-gatherers, whose way of life had remained unchanged for thousands of years, is a ground-breaking work of anthropology, remarkable not only for its scholarship but for its novelistic grasp of character. On the basis of field trips in the 1980s, Thomas has now updated her book to show what happened to the Bushmen as the tide of industrial civilization—with its flotsam of property rights, wage labor, and alcohol—swept over them. The result is a powerful, elegiac look at an endangered culture as well as a provocative critique of our own.
"The charm of this book is that the author can so truly convey the strangeness of the desert life in which we perceive human traits as familiar as our own. . . . The Harmless People is a model of the style very simple and precise, perfectly suited to the neat, even fastidious activities of a people who must make their world out of next to nothing." — The Atlantic
In the 1950s Elizabeth Marshall Thomas became one of the first Westerners to live with the Bushmen of the Kalahari desert in Botswana and South-West Africa. Her account of these nomadic hunter-gatherers, whose way of life had remained unchanged for thousands of years, is a ground-breaking work of anthropology, remarkable not only for its scholarship but for its novelistic grasp of character. On the basis of field trips in the 1980s, Thomas has now updated her book to show what happened to the Bushmen as the tide of industrial civilization—with its flotsam of property rights, wage labor, and alcohol—swept over them. The result is a powerful, elegiac look at an endangered culture as well as a provocative critique of our own.
"The charm of this book is that the author can so truly convey the strangeness of the desert life in which we perceive human traits as familiar as our own. . . . The Harmless People is a model of the style very simple and precise, perfectly suited to the neat, even fastidious activities of a people who must make their world out of next to nothing." — The Atlantic
336 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1959
35 people are currently reading
1198 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
46 books255 followersElizabeth Marshall Thomas is the author of The Harmless People, a non fiction work about the Kung Bushmen of southwestern Africa, and of Reindeer Moon, a novel about the paleolithic hunter gatherers of Siberia, both of which were tremendous international successes. She lives in New Hampshire.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 61 reviews
October 24, 2021
An interesting and very detailed book about the Bushmen of the Bechualand Protectorate (now Botswana) and Namibia, from an author who spent a lot of time living with groups of them. Published in 1959, the travels all took place in the 1950s. (Now known as San or Saan, this terminology is not used at all in this book, and the tribal naming doesn't align with any of the tribal names given on the San wikipedia page, so I will just stick with what is in this book in my review.) The author describes her current travel, but also throws back to previous trips he family have undertaken, so is able to explain the changes that have taken place between trips (to the family groups primarily, but also references to waterholes, villages etc). She is travelling with her parents, and seemingly sometimes with her brother, although her writing concentrates the story well away from them, and focuses on the Bushmen and the Kalahari Desert.
The first half of the book is about a small group of Bushmen who Thomas calls the Gikwe Bushmen, led by Ukwane and his younger relative Gai. There is a short family tree at the beginning of the book which joins up some of uncertainty I felt (although I am sure it was explained somewhere in the text, I must have not taken it all in). As well as living alongside this family group, sharing their food, their traditional way of life and learning to search for food, listen to some of their handed down stories, Thomas shares all her day to day interactions, but the book retains its accessibility despite containing all this detail anthropological information.
As well as this family group there are other Bushmen, whom Elizabeth refers to as the jealous men from Okwa, although there are women and children with them, who come to camp within a few metres of the family group to ensure they are not missing out on what they imagine of the feasting brought by the white people camping with Ukwane.
After leaving this group and setting out for the northern Kalahari, crossing the border into South Wet Africa (now Namibia). Here they connect with another group of families, referred to by the author as Kung Bushmen, primarily Toma's family (his wife Tu, an daughter Norna, and relatives Crooked Kwi, Gao Feet and Lazy Kwe, and their respective families and those who live with them. Again with this half of the book we get the traditions, the tribal stories and beliefs, information about their hunting and gathered food, and their tribal connections. It is pretty much a full cultural and tribal explanation of their way of life.
Accompanying the writing are several pages of black and white photos. These are of a range of subjects, but primarily people. They are interesting and of reasonable quality given the date, and certainly add to the writing.
While perhaps not the most spirited for books - it goes flat for pages at a time - it is detailed and thorough, it gives no obvious reason to disbelieve any of the information, and is quite readable.
4 stars.
The first half of the book is about a small group of Bushmen who Thomas calls the Gikwe Bushmen, led by Ukwane and his younger relative Gai. There is a short family tree at the beginning of the book which joins up some of uncertainty I felt (although I am sure it was explained somewhere in the text, I must have not taken it all in). As well as living alongside this family group, sharing their food, their traditional way of life and learning to search for food, listen to some of their handed down stories, Thomas shares all her day to day interactions, but the book retains its accessibility despite containing all this detail anthropological information.
As well as this family group there are other Bushmen, whom Elizabeth refers to as the jealous men from Okwa, although there are women and children with them, who come to camp within a few metres of the family group to ensure they are not missing out on what they imagine of the feasting brought by the white people camping with Ukwane.
After leaving this group and setting out for the northern Kalahari, crossing the border into South Wet Africa (now Namibia). Here they connect with another group of families, referred to by the author as Kung Bushmen, primarily Toma's family (his wife Tu, an daughter Norna, and relatives Crooked Kwi, Gao Feet and Lazy Kwe, and their respective families and those who live with them. Again with this half of the book we get the traditions, the tribal stories and beliefs, information about their hunting and gathered food, and their tribal connections. It is pretty much a full cultural and tribal explanation of their way of life.
Accompanying the writing are several pages of black and white photos. These are of a range of subjects, but primarily people. They are interesting and of reasonable quality given the date, and certainly add to the writing.
While perhaps not the most spirited for books - it goes flat for pages at a time - it is detailed and thorough, it gives no obvious reason to disbelieve any of the information, and is quite readable.
4 stars.
February 11, 2014
Anecdotal and empathic and likely more reliable, and certainly more readable, than most formal ethnography, this wonderful memoir builds modestly, non-judgmentally, and gradually to its lyrical, dreamlike final scene, a description of an all-night dance.
One of the great benefits of a story like this is that it reveals the continuum connecting us with our other animal partners. Not that the Bushmen are more like animals than us civilized people, but that we're all animals together in this ecosystem, and the less we rely on our advanced technologies the more obvious that is.
Sure, it's a dated historical record of a culture that has largely vanished. I know many people who scoff at the powerless remnants of these tiny minority societies, convinced that the future belongs to the dominant majority - that only we have the power to solve the "world's problems" - we, the aggressors who have created those problems….
One of the great benefits of a story like this is that it reveals the continuum connecting us with our other animal partners. Not that the Bushmen are more like animals than us civilized people, but that we're all animals together in this ecosystem, and the less we rely on our advanced technologies the more obvious that is.
Sure, it's a dated historical record of a culture that has largely vanished. I know many people who scoff at the powerless remnants of these tiny minority societies, convinced that the future belongs to the dominant majority - that only we have the power to solve the "world's problems" - we, the aggressors who have created those problems….
June 28, 2010
A very accessible ethnography for those of us with no background in the field. In the 1950s, Elizabeth spent long periods of time living with the Bushmen of the Kalahari and developed a deep love for them, and they for her. She presents them here as real people, and she made me care about them as individuals rather than just subjects of study.
March 23, 2015
Folks who spend their lives staring at computer screens in vast corporate cubicle farms have a powerful tendency to drift off into vivid daydreams of gathering nuts, roots, and melons in wild country, with their hunter-gatherer ancestors, in a world without roads, cities, or alphabets. For them, there is treasure to be found in Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’ book, The Harmless People. It’s a beautiful book.
Elizabeth was 19 when she first met the Bushmen of southern Africa. Her parents led three expeditions between 1950 and 1956 to study and film these people, who were among the last surviving hunter-gatherer societies in the world. The family spent a lot of time living in Bushmen camps, learned their language, and really got to know them. Elizabeth’s book is a respectful and affectionate diary of her experiences with these people, and it is easy and enjoyable to read.
The first expedition searched for several months before finding Bushmen, because Bushmen disappeared whenever they saw outsiders, who were a dependable source of trouble. Black and white outsiders frequently kidnapped them, and forced them to spend the rest of their days as farm laborers. They never returned home. Police would arrest them if they killed a giraffe in the desert, because giraffes were royal animals protected by the law. Arrested hunters were hauled away, and never seen again. The Thomas expedition eventually gained their trust because they developed a reputation for being very generous with their gifts, and for being unusually decent white folks.
Long ago, Bushmen lived across much of southern Africa. But black and white farmers and herders aggressively seized the best lands, forcing the Bushmen into the Kalahari Desert, an exceedingly difficult place to live. Some places were so dry that the primary sources of water were melons, roots, and killed animals. Some winter nights dipped below freezing, leading to sleepless nights for the nearly naked people.
Each group lived in a specific territory, sometimes several hundred square miles in area, which had clearly defined traditional boundaries. They intimately know every bit of their homeland, every rock, every bush, and every notable variation of the terrain. They knew exactly where different types of food could be found. They often had to move their camp every few days.
Hunting was done with spears and bows and arrows. Arrows were treated with a poison made from the pupa of a beetle, which could take several days to kill the prey. After shooting, hunters waited two or three days, then tracked the wounded animal, hoping to find it dead. One unlucky hunter was fully impaled on the long horn of an angry buffalo who wasn’t dead yet. Amazingly, he survived. Another time, hunters tracked a wounded wildebeest, and found it surrounded by 20 to 30 hungry lions. Amazingly, they drove away the lions, finished off the animal, and carried the meat back to camp.
In the honey season, men climbed high into the trees to raid the hives, whilst being stung everywhere by a furious cloud of stingy bees. There was a long tradition of fatal falls. Hives that were frequently raided became fiercely defensive, viciously attacking all of the Bushmen on the ground, before the climbing began. Honey was definitely not a free lunch.
Living in a harsh land, the Bushmen were very careful to sidestep the problems caused by overpopulation. The stability of their society was more important than the survival of every newborn, and these cultural values enabled their way of life to be sustainable. They believed that there was a period of delay between birth and becoming alive. If the newborn was crippled or deformed, it was promptly buried and forgotten. When conditions were strained, and it was not possible to feed more mouths, newborns were not kept. The Bushmen had no tools for contraception or abortion. To avoid the pain of infanticide, they frequently abstained from intercourse for long periods of time, when there was room for no more. Usually, childbirth was a joyful event, because the number of pregnancies was voluntarily limited.
Thomas described the ongoing soap operas of camp life, and the inevitable friction that developed among people who lived in close contact with others all the time. Camp life was not a never-ending love fest. But great care was taken to avoid conflict, and to promptly defuse and resolve conflicts. Belongings were constantly kept in circulation via gift-giving to avoid jealousy. The fundamental keys to their success were cooperation and sharing.
She presented us with a fascinating description of thriving in a challenging land. Bushmen life seemed to be far less dismal than life in corporate cubicle farms. Bushmen enjoyed healthy, satisfying, and meaningful lives, despite their lack of televisions, computers, cell phones, automobiles; despite being a cruelly persecuted minority; despite being surrounded by lions and leopards who enjoyed having children for lunch; despite the blast furnace summer days when the sand burned their feet. Life was good. They had what they needed.
Thomas published her book in 1961. She returned to the region in 1986 and 1987 and discovered that the Bushmen had been blindsided by what is called sustainable development (i.e., catastrophic destruction). This inspired her to produce a revised edition, which was published in 1989, to bring us up to date.
The Bushmen had been driven off their land and forced into villages, where their superiors treated them like the scum of the Earth. Their culture disintegrated into a nightmare of malnutrition, disease, alcoholism, homicide, and wage labor. People quit sharing, ate in secret, and hid purchases.
Thomas summed up the new reality: “No Bushmen lack contact with the West and none is undamaged by it. And their own way of life, the old way, a way of life which preceded the human species, no longer exists but is gone from the face of the earth at enormous cost to the individuals who once lived it.” Welcome to industrial civilization!
Elizabeth was 19 when she first met the Bushmen of southern Africa. Her parents led three expeditions between 1950 and 1956 to study and film these people, who were among the last surviving hunter-gatherer societies in the world. The family spent a lot of time living in Bushmen camps, learned their language, and really got to know them. Elizabeth’s book is a respectful and affectionate diary of her experiences with these people, and it is easy and enjoyable to read.
The first expedition searched for several months before finding Bushmen, because Bushmen disappeared whenever they saw outsiders, who were a dependable source of trouble. Black and white outsiders frequently kidnapped them, and forced them to spend the rest of their days as farm laborers. They never returned home. Police would arrest them if they killed a giraffe in the desert, because giraffes were royal animals protected by the law. Arrested hunters were hauled away, and never seen again. The Thomas expedition eventually gained their trust because they developed a reputation for being very generous with their gifts, and for being unusually decent white folks.
Long ago, Bushmen lived across much of southern Africa. But black and white farmers and herders aggressively seized the best lands, forcing the Bushmen into the Kalahari Desert, an exceedingly difficult place to live. Some places were so dry that the primary sources of water were melons, roots, and killed animals. Some winter nights dipped below freezing, leading to sleepless nights for the nearly naked people.
Each group lived in a specific territory, sometimes several hundred square miles in area, which had clearly defined traditional boundaries. They intimately know every bit of their homeland, every rock, every bush, and every notable variation of the terrain. They knew exactly where different types of food could be found. They often had to move their camp every few days.
Hunting was done with spears and bows and arrows. Arrows were treated with a poison made from the pupa of a beetle, which could take several days to kill the prey. After shooting, hunters waited two or three days, then tracked the wounded animal, hoping to find it dead. One unlucky hunter was fully impaled on the long horn of an angry buffalo who wasn’t dead yet. Amazingly, he survived. Another time, hunters tracked a wounded wildebeest, and found it surrounded by 20 to 30 hungry lions. Amazingly, they drove away the lions, finished off the animal, and carried the meat back to camp.
In the honey season, men climbed high into the trees to raid the hives, whilst being stung everywhere by a furious cloud of stingy bees. There was a long tradition of fatal falls. Hives that were frequently raided became fiercely defensive, viciously attacking all of the Bushmen on the ground, before the climbing began. Honey was definitely not a free lunch.
Living in a harsh land, the Bushmen were very careful to sidestep the problems caused by overpopulation. The stability of their society was more important than the survival of every newborn, and these cultural values enabled their way of life to be sustainable. They believed that there was a period of delay between birth and becoming alive. If the newborn was crippled or deformed, it was promptly buried and forgotten. When conditions were strained, and it was not possible to feed more mouths, newborns were not kept. The Bushmen had no tools for contraception or abortion. To avoid the pain of infanticide, they frequently abstained from intercourse for long periods of time, when there was room for no more. Usually, childbirth was a joyful event, because the number of pregnancies was voluntarily limited.
Thomas described the ongoing soap operas of camp life, and the inevitable friction that developed among people who lived in close contact with others all the time. Camp life was not a never-ending love fest. But great care was taken to avoid conflict, and to promptly defuse and resolve conflicts. Belongings were constantly kept in circulation via gift-giving to avoid jealousy. The fundamental keys to their success were cooperation and sharing.
She presented us with a fascinating description of thriving in a challenging land. Bushmen life seemed to be far less dismal than life in corporate cubicle farms. Bushmen enjoyed healthy, satisfying, and meaningful lives, despite their lack of televisions, computers, cell phones, automobiles; despite being a cruelly persecuted minority; despite being surrounded by lions and leopards who enjoyed having children for lunch; despite the blast furnace summer days when the sand burned their feet. Life was good. They had what they needed.
Thomas published her book in 1961. She returned to the region in 1986 and 1987 and discovered that the Bushmen had been blindsided by what is called sustainable development (i.e., catastrophic destruction). This inspired her to produce a revised edition, which was published in 1989, to bring us up to date.
The Bushmen had been driven off their land and forced into villages, where their superiors treated them like the scum of the Earth. Their culture disintegrated into a nightmare of malnutrition, disease, alcoholism, homicide, and wage labor. People quit sharing, ate in secret, and hid purchases.
Thomas summed up the new reality: “No Bushmen lack contact with the West and none is undamaged by it. And their own way of life, the old way, a way of life which preceded the human species, no longer exists but is gone from the face of the earth at enormous cost to the individuals who once lived it.” Welcome to industrial civilization!
July 30, 2017
I'm not an expert in the unreliable narration of white anthropologists, but I know books like this should be approached with caution, skepticism, a hearty dose of anti-colonialist critique. Marshall Thomas is susceptible to racist concepts like 'primitive' and 'harmless' and 'simple,' susceptible to both romanticizing and unfairly condemning the Gikwe and Kung people she spends time with. But even wading through that confusing soup, there's still something certain about the power and beauty of these people and their societies, and the awfulness of genocide. I'm sure there's a better way to get there than through this 1950s ethnography, but regardless it's a history that should be confronted.
October 16, 2016
I am, at heart, the daughter of a student of anthropology, and I myself took a minor in linguistics in college. So when I saw this book on Goodreads, I knew I would be fascinated by it, and that was definitely true.
Thomas traveled with her family to what is now Botswana and Namibia in the 1950s to live with and learn from the Bushman people, a group of hunter-gatherers whose language features linguistic clicks. This book is the result of those expeditions, and from another made in the late 1980s, and discusses Thomas's experiences, as well as a sympathetic look at the Bushman way of life.
What surprised me the most is how kind Thomas and her family were to the Bushmen. There was no attempt made to "civilize" them, and no statement in this book about why these people should be brought up to Western standards. These folks simply came into study the Bushmen with no underlying objective. Thomas simply observes the Bushmen and tells their story as she sees it, with no commentary other than to explain why it is that the Bushmen do things a certain way.
From this, we learn that the lives of the Bushmen in the Kalahari desert, a place where there is no water to be found for nine months out of the year, is excruciatingly difficult. The Bushmen subsist on roots that store water inside them, as well as a nut that has a very high fat content. Every part of an animal that is killed is used; when butchering a gemsbok, the Bushmen first milked her dry and drank her milk, then took all the grass out of her stomach and squeezed that dry, and in this way increased their water supply. When the alternative is having no water at all, without which a human cannot survive, it is no surprise that the Bushmen take every advantage of any source of liquid at all.
The Bushmen also are a "harmless people," which is what their name for themselves translates to. They do not want to fight, they do not want to start disagreements. Everything is shared among all the members of a band because without sharing, the people would not survive in this extremely harsh climate. If someone has a particularly good knife, it is eventually given to every person who wants it in that band. Food is shared with every member, though who owns a particular cut of meat is very important. But those who own more meat are expected to share with those who have much less, and in this way, everyone survives. Even still, many people succumb to hunger and thirst in years that are particularly bad.
It's amazing to me how well the Bushmen knew their homeland. Even a small child knew every tiny detail of the land, and each person knew what part of the land they could camp upon based on various familial relationships. A Bushman that had noticed a tiny vine leading to a root containing life-giving water would know to whom that root belonged, or, if it belonged to no one, would make a note of it and come back later for it when it was needed.
Unfortunately, the way of life described in this book no longer exists. Thomas returned in the late 1980s and found that many of the people she had known in the 1950s had died, and their descendants had succumbed to the lure of Westernization. No longer did the bands roam the desert in search of veld food, and in fact, most of the young adults had completely forgotten all the knowledge accumulated by their ancestors regarding survival. Alcohol had been introduced, as well as western clothing and ways of life. It is truly amazing to me how quickly Western civilization managed to destroy a culture that was so ancient and primitive.
While not as scholarly as an ethnograph would be, this book is eminently readable and compelling, and presents a complete and impartial look at a civilization so unlike our own.
Thomas traveled with her family to what is now Botswana and Namibia in the 1950s to live with and learn from the Bushman people, a group of hunter-gatherers whose language features linguistic clicks. This book is the result of those expeditions, and from another made in the late 1980s, and discusses Thomas's experiences, as well as a sympathetic look at the Bushman way of life.
What surprised me the most is how kind Thomas and her family were to the Bushmen. There was no attempt made to "civilize" them, and no statement in this book about why these people should be brought up to Western standards. These folks simply came into study the Bushmen with no underlying objective. Thomas simply observes the Bushmen and tells their story as she sees it, with no commentary other than to explain why it is that the Bushmen do things a certain way.
From this, we learn that the lives of the Bushmen in the Kalahari desert, a place where there is no water to be found for nine months out of the year, is excruciatingly difficult. The Bushmen subsist on roots that store water inside them, as well as a nut that has a very high fat content. Every part of an animal that is killed is used; when butchering a gemsbok, the Bushmen first milked her dry and drank her milk, then took all the grass out of her stomach and squeezed that dry, and in this way increased their water supply. When the alternative is having no water at all, without which a human cannot survive, it is no surprise that the Bushmen take every advantage of any source of liquid at all.
The Bushmen also are a "harmless people," which is what their name for themselves translates to. They do not want to fight, they do not want to start disagreements. Everything is shared among all the members of a band because without sharing, the people would not survive in this extremely harsh climate. If someone has a particularly good knife, it is eventually given to every person who wants it in that band. Food is shared with every member, though who owns a particular cut of meat is very important. But those who own more meat are expected to share with those who have much less, and in this way, everyone survives. Even still, many people succumb to hunger and thirst in years that are particularly bad.
It's amazing to me how well the Bushmen knew their homeland. Even a small child knew every tiny detail of the land, and each person knew what part of the land they could camp upon based on various familial relationships. A Bushman that had noticed a tiny vine leading to a root containing life-giving water would know to whom that root belonged, or, if it belonged to no one, would make a note of it and come back later for it when it was needed.
Unfortunately, the way of life described in this book no longer exists. Thomas returned in the late 1980s and found that many of the people she had known in the 1950s had died, and their descendants had succumbed to the lure of Westernization. No longer did the bands roam the desert in search of veld food, and in fact, most of the young adults had completely forgotten all the knowledge accumulated by their ancestors regarding survival. Alcohol had been introduced, as well as western clothing and ways of life. It is truly amazing to me how quickly Western civilization managed to destroy a culture that was so ancient and primitive.
While not as scholarly as an ethnograph would be, this book is eminently readable and compelling, and presents a complete and impartial look at a civilization so unlike our own.
June 6, 2018
Part memoir part ethnography, this is not an academic anthropology book, and I’ve been enjoying it more because of that.
Academic anthropology books tell you about norms. You come out with a good idea of the average person’s average life. This gives an impression of a sea of people peacefully moving through a pre-ordained pattern with minimal friction.
This book defines the average by describing the outliers: the man who never became a hunter. The girl who refused to get married. The crippled boy who did become a hunter. The wife who would refuse to provide for her menfolk. These stories tell you what the social norm is – and also how society reacts when people don’t fit the mold. This last part tells you more about a society than anything else, I think.
There are also charming and touching vignettes about life generally. The men rolling their eyes at how long it takes to go anywhere with women and children. Children “running away” to their grandparents when they get mad at their parents. Elderly grandparents losing everything in a fire started by their granddaughter. Teens who aren’t eager to become adults with responsibility. The complex system by which everyone is provided for, although with varying amounts of dignity.
One thing I got out of this book was a sort of anti-attachment-parenting philosophy. Attachment parenting is based predominantly upon how the peaceful !Kung raise their babies, which is touched on occasionally in the book. The author describes 5-year-olds who are still nursing and having their mothers wrapped around their little fingers. But far from producing the strong, confident children we desire in western society, the author mentions several times that the Bushmen don't come into confidence until middle age. The story about the mother who gave her son up to slavery because she was asked by someone intimidating stands out particularly. There may be other environmental factors contributing to this lack of assertiveness (short stature, rough environment, aggressive neighbors) but it's clear that attachment parenting is no panacea.
Academic anthropology books tell you about norms. You come out with a good idea of the average person’s average life. This gives an impression of a sea of people peacefully moving through a pre-ordained pattern with minimal friction.
This book defines the average by describing the outliers: the man who never became a hunter. The girl who refused to get married. The crippled boy who did become a hunter. The wife who would refuse to provide for her menfolk. These stories tell you what the social norm is – and also how society reacts when people don’t fit the mold. This last part tells you more about a society than anything else, I think.
There are also charming and touching vignettes about life generally. The men rolling their eyes at how long it takes to go anywhere with women and children. Children “running away” to their grandparents when they get mad at their parents. Elderly grandparents losing everything in a fire started by their granddaughter. Teens who aren’t eager to become adults with responsibility. The complex system by which everyone is provided for, although with varying amounts of dignity.
One thing I got out of this book was a sort of anti-attachment-parenting philosophy. Attachment parenting is based predominantly upon how the peaceful !Kung raise their babies, which is touched on occasionally in the book. The author describes 5-year-olds who are still nursing and having their mothers wrapped around their little fingers. But far from producing the strong, confident children we desire in western society, the author mentions several times that the Bushmen don't come into confidence until middle age. The story about the mother who gave her son up to slavery because she was asked by someone intimidating stands out particularly. There may be other environmental factors contributing to this lack of assertiveness (short stature, rough environment, aggressive neighbors) but it's clear that attachment parenting is no panacea.
August 15, 2007
This one starts off slowly, but really does a good job of painting a realistic picture a) of how the Bushmen of the Kalahari live and b) of how European and American people viewed them at the time of the Author's experience, circa 1958.
While she's obviously very forward-thinking for her time, there is a hint of patronism in the text, the same kind of patronism a lot of rich liberals get when discussing those poor, uneducated people. Like, "if only they knew how, they'd be more like us."
Anyway, that does go away (or you get used to it), and the edition I read had a follow-up in the back that was written in the 90s. It's a great portrait of a culture that's about as alien to the one I grew up in as anything else on Earth, and very much worth the read.
While she's obviously very forward-thinking for her time, there is a hint of patronism in the text, the same kind of patronism a lot of rich liberals get when discussing those poor, uneducated people. Like, "if only they knew how, they'd be more like us."
Anyway, that does go away (or you get used to it), and the edition I read had a follow-up in the back that was written in the 90s. It's a great portrait of a culture that's about as alien to the one I grew up in as anything else on Earth, and very much worth the read.
August 12, 2020
A fascinating and memorable account written by an extraordinarily gifted woman who approached the amazing Bushmen culture not as a professional anthropologist but as a humanist. During her time living with the Bushmen, one of the earth’s last remaining hunter-gatherer societies, she immersed herself in their way of living, embracing them as individuals and interfering with their way of life as little as possible. A few observations will illustrate the uniqueness of these diminutive, resourceful people:
The Bushmen cannot afford to fight with each other because survival is precarious, demanding cooperation and free sharing of resources — and because their only weapon is their arrow poison, for which there is no antidote.
The depth of their knowledge of their harsh environment and its animal and vegetable inhabitants is astounding, spanning natural history, weather cycles, animal behavior, anatomical details and most of all, how to extract a living from a land where there is no water at all for nine months of the year.
Unique among “primitive” cultures, theirs is a matrilocal society, where following a marriage, the young husband resides with his wife’s family band as a hunter, becoming a mainstay in their survival.
When they need to travel light, Bushmen commonly leave some of their few but precious possessions anywhere they wish, for the things are never touched by others; theft is so unknown that Bushmen do not even forbid it, having no need for taboos or laws against that which never happens.
No caring and perceptive person can read this loving account of a gentle, remarkable people without being left with a great sense of loss; for surely such a harmless society cannot hope to survive. It’s not the brutally uncompromising natural world of the Kalahari that menaces these unique people but the harsh realities of a post-colonial Africa, beset by wars, disease and corrupt regimes. A people who retain almost no personal possessions, no permanent homes, no national or regional authority to advocate for them, no land to call their own, cannot escape being exploited, captured into virtual slavery and ultimately pushed into extinction by bigger, aggressive neighboring groups and by farmers of European origin who claim Africa for their own.
A beautifully written time capsule.
The Bushmen cannot afford to fight with each other because survival is precarious, demanding cooperation and free sharing of resources — and because their only weapon is their arrow poison, for which there is no antidote.
The depth of their knowledge of their harsh environment and its animal and vegetable inhabitants is astounding, spanning natural history, weather cycles, animal behavior, anatomical details and most of all, how to extract a living from a land where there is no water at all for nine months of the year.
Unique among “primitive” cultures, theirs is a matrilocal society, where following a marriage, the young husband resides with his wife’s family band as a hunter, becoming a mainstay in their survival.
When they need to travel light, Bushmen commonly leave some of their few but precious possessions anywhere they wish, for the things are never touched by others; theft is so unknown that Bushmen do not even forbid it, having no need for taboos or laws against that which never happens.
No caring and perceptive person can read this loving account of a gentle, remarkable people without being left with a great sense of loss; for surely such a harmless society cannot hope to survive. It’s not the brutally uncompromising natural world of the Kalahari that menaces these unique people but the harsh realities of a post-colonial Africa, beset by wars, disease and corrupt regimes. A people who retain almost no personal possessions, no permanent homes, no national or regional authority to advocate for them, no land to call their own, cannot escape being exploited, captured into virtual slavery and ultimately pushed into extinction by bigger, aggressive neighboring groups and by farmers of European origin who claim Africa for their own.
A beautifully written time capsule.
August 9, 2020
Una de las etnografías más bellas que he leído, y también una de las más accesibles para cualquier lector. Es incomprensible que un clásico de la antropología como este no se haya traducido todavía al castellano. Después de una narración tan plácida y poética, el epílogo (escrito treinta años después, tras la aniquilación de la antigua forma de vida) resulta tan doloroso de leer que es casi imposible de asumir, y menos aún de describir.
"The concept of Bushmen in a faraway wilderness, pleasant as we may find it, is simply and perniciously untrue. No Bushmen lack contact with the West and none is undamaged by it. And their own way of life, the old way, a way of life which preceded the human species, no longer exists but is gone from the face of the earth at enormous cost to the individuals who once lived it".
"The concept of Bushmen in a faraway wilderness, pleasant as we may find it, is simply and perniciously untrue. No Bushmen lack contact with the West and none is undamaged by it. And their own way of life, the old way, a way of life which preceded the human species, no longer exists but is gone from the face of the earth at enormous cost to the individuals who once lived it".
May 13, 2021
One of my all time favorite books now. Highly recommend for anyone with any interest at all in other cultures and ways of life. Beautiful, deeply saddening and hopeful. More so than any other nonfiction I’ve read.
August 26, 2015
Reposting my July 13, 2007 Amazon review of this book:
A firsthand, close-up view of a little-known and little-understood people
The Bushmen are well known - and intriguing - to phoneticians, because Bushman languages, along with Bushman-influenced languages such as Zulu and Xhosa, are the only ones in the world with linguistic clicks. As a teacher of phonetics, that was my own original motivation for reading this book. I also thought it would be useful background to have before visiting South Africa. Finally, I met a very friendly and kind Nama-speaking Bushman in Minnesota once, and that further piqued my curiosity about his home culture.
This book is truly a rich, firsthand resource on what traditional Bushman life was like in the 1950s. The Bushmen may be praised for their cleverness at being able to live in a land with very little visible water; but in this book you will learn that in fact many Bushmen died of thirst and hunger, not to mention disease, when times were unusually hard.
One half of the book is dedicated to each of two Bushman groups with whom the author and her family stayed for extended periods, the Gikwe, and the !Kung, of "The Gods Must Be Crazy" fame. It was fascinating to read about how they courted, married, divorced, gave birth, chose names, cared for children and the aged, went through puberty, gathered and hunted, interacted with animals, told stories, died, and dealt with the spirits of the dead. I especially enjoyed the descriptions of Bushman music, e.g. singing accompanied by playing on the stringed guashi, the bow, and the te k'na (mbira/kalimba/thumb piano), and the ritual dancing that sometimes went with it. Thomas states that music is by far the strongest of the Bushman arts.
Mentions of some of the effects of intruding white people on the Bushmen's lives may give you pause. The Bushmen treated their white visitors with great openness and kindness. You can praise the generosity of the white chroniclers when they give gifts of food, clothes, and other useful items, and feel relieved when a formerly powerful hunter with a gangrenous leg is taken to be fitted with a peg prosthesis. Yet Thomas also mentions that some Bushmen had been tracked down and taken into slavery by people who had followed the tracks left by Thomas's family's vehicle on a previous visit. And other Bushmen had their guards down when whites came to kidnap them to do forced labor - the Bushmen welcomed them, expecting them to be as friendly and harmless as Thomas's clan.
Thomas goes to great pains to depict the people she observed as accurately and honestly as possible, consciously avoiding the "noble savage" trap. Bushmen shared everything - because it was expected and it would cause great jealousy, conflict and bad relations if they did not; they did not take anything they knew to belong to another; and they had a strong sense of family and cared for those unable to care for themselves. But they practiced infanticide if a baby was born while the previous one was still nursing, since there would probably not be enough milk for both to survive. They could also be vain, jealous and petty, and they could be cruel in razzing people with obvious weaknesses - like any other humans.
You will pick up new Bushman-specific vocabulary reading this book, including words like kaross (the skin wraparound which was a Bushman's usual attire), veld food, pan (a water hole), scherm, gemsbok, tsama melons, bi root, and tsi nuts.
Thomas includes two family tree diagrams at the front of the book to help the reader sort out the relationships between the characters in her accounts. I found these most helpful and referred often to them.
Beyond providing informative content, Thomas is an engaging writer. This is all the more impressive since she wrote the book in her early twenties.
Thomas's book is one of the very few sources of detailed information on the Bushmen. I read the original edition from 1959, so I haven't seen the updated parts on how the Bushmen were doing by the 1980s. Although a lot of what I've heard about Bushman societies today is rather negative and depressing, I look forward to finding out more, and hope the various Bushman groups manage somehow to preserve their remarkable languages and the best of their unique cultures and traditions.
A firsthand, close-up view of a little-known and little-understood people
The Bushmen are well known - and intriguing - to phoneticians, because Bushman languages, along with Bushman-influenced languages such as Zulu and Xhosa, are the only ones in the world with linguistic clicks. As a teacher of phonetics, that was my own original motivation for reading this book. I also thought it would be useful background to have before visiting South Africa. Finally, I met a very friendly and kind Nama-speaking Bushman in Minnesota once, and that further piqued my curiosity about his home culture.
This book is truly a rich, firsthand resource on what traditional Bushman life was like in the 1950s. The Bushmen may be praised for their cleverness at being able to live in a land with very little visible water; but in this book you will learn that in fact many Bushmen died of thirst and hunger, not to mention disease, when times were unusually hard.
One half of the book is dedicated to each of two Bushman groups with whom the author and her family stayed for extended periods, the Gikwe, and the !Kung, of "The Gods Must Be Crazy" fame. It was fascinating to read about how they courted, married, divorced, gave birth, chose names, cared for children and the aged, went through puberty, gathered and hunted, interacted with animals, told stories, died, and dealt with the spirits of the dead. I especially enjoyed the descriptions of Bushman music, e.g. singing accompanied by playing on the stringed guashi, the bow, and the te k'na (mbira/kalimba/thumb piano), and the ritual dancing that sometimes went with it. Thomas states that music is by far the strongest of the Bushman arts.
Mentions of some of the effects of intruding white people on the Bushmen's lives may give you pause. The Bushmen treated their white visitors with great openness and kindness. You can praise the generosity of the white chroniclers when they give gifts of food, clothes, and other useful items, and feel relieved when a formerly powerful hunter with a gangrenous leg is taken to be fitted with a peg prosthesis. Yet Thomas also mentions that some Bushmen had been tracked down and taken into slavery by people who had followed the tracks left by Thomas's family's vehicle on a previous visit. And other Bushmen had their guards down when whites came to kidnap them to do forced labor - the Bushmen welcomed them, expecting them to be as friendly and harmless as Thomas's clan.
Thomas goes to great pains to depict the people she observed as accurately and honestly as possible, consciously avoiding the "noble savage" trap. Bushmen shared everything - because it was expected and it would cause great jealousy, conflict and bad relations if they did not; they did not take anything they knew to belong to another; and they had a strong sense of family and cared for those unable to care for themselves. But they practiced infanticide if a baby was born while the previous one was still nursing, since there would probably not be enough milk for both to survive. They could also be vain, jealous and petty, and they could be cruel in razzing people with obvious weaknesses - like any other humans.
You will pick up new Bushman-specific vocabulary reading this book, including words like kaross (the skin wraparound which was a Bushman's usual attire), veld food, pan (a water hole), scherm, gemsbok, tsama melons, bi root, and tsi nuts.
Thomas includes two family tree diagrams at the front of the book to help the reader sort out the relationships between the characters in her accounts. I found these most helpful and referred often to them.
Beyond providing informative content, Thomas is an engaging writer. This is all the more impressive since she wrote the book in her early twenties.
Thomas's book is one of the very few sources of detailed information on the Bushmen. I read the original edition from 1959, so I haven't seen the updated parts on how the Bushmen were doing by the 1980s. Although a lot of what I've heard about Bushman societies today is rather negative and depressing, I look forward to finding out more, and hope the various Bushman groups manage somehow to preserve their remarkable languages and the best of their unique cultures and traditions.
January 19, 2009
As well as being an amazing folklorist/fantasy writer, Thomas's book on the San is one of the best I've ever read about the Kalahari and its life and people. I think I bought this one in South Africa or Zimbabwe. When I flipped through it I found a postcard I'd started to Debbie and never finished.
October 13, 2010
An engrossing and beautifully written small book about the Bushmen (now called the San people) of the Kalahari Dessert and other areas. Mrs. Thomas has a poet's soul, and her portrayl of these gentle souls in their native soil moved me. The book was first written around 1955 and has been updated to illustrate how the Bushmen fare today.
December 18, 2023
In the 1950s Elizabeth Marshall went on an anthropological expedition with her parents and brother to learn how groups of hunter gatherers known as the Bushmen live. The Harmless People tells the story of her observations as she stayed with two different groups of Bushmen, the second part detailing her experiences with the !Kung.
The book is an engaging narrative of a people who live a life very different from our own, their ingenuity and resilience in surviving a harsh environment, as well as how their customs helped to maintain social control and maximize survival. Further, since Marshall discusses two different tribes living in very different environments, you also see how the environment plays a role in developing their culture and how they survive.
While later expeditions had agendas to find a Utopian group of people or to confirm a preconceived notion about human behavior, such as that we are aggressive, Marshall pushes back on both extremes. The way the Bushman lived could hardly be described as Utopian, but as Marshall points out they developed good social controls amongst themselves to maintain order and increase survival. Marshall also hits back against the portrayal of the Bushmen in films such as The Gods Must Be Crazy. Sadly, most of what I knew about the Bushmen before reading this had been from the film, which was greatly misleading.
Tragically, this is also a heartbreaking book. Thirty years after she first visited the Bushmen, Marshall provided an update in the 1980s about how modernization had impacted the Bushmen. Due to drought and farmers wanting their land, many were forced into impoverished jobs or onto unsustainable farms and developed alcoholism and, reeling from the disruption of their social controls, did become violent. Reading about the horrific fates that befell most of the Bushmen that had been profiled in this book was gut wrenching.
Marshall talked about her brother's efforts to help the Bushmen develop more sustainable farms and tried to end on a positive note how even on the farms their culture is preserved in various forms, but also acknowledged the difficulties ahead for them.
I learned a lot from this book. It really enforced to me that life for hunter gatherers is more about survival than thriving and enforced the role of the environment in shaping human behavior. It also read more like a novel than an academic work at times, making it accessible to people who otherwise would not be interested. Highly recommend.
The book is an engaging narrative of a people who live a life very different from our own, their ingenuity and resilience in surviving a harsh environment, as well as how their customs helped to maintain social control and maximize survival. Further, since Marshall discusses two different tribes living in very different environments, you also see how the environment plays a role in developing their culture and how they survive.
While later expeditions had agendas to find a Utopian group of people or to confirm a preconceived notion about human behavior, such as that we are aggressive, Marshall pushes back on both extremes. The way the Bushman lived could hardly be described as Utopian, but as Marshall points out they developed good social controls amongst themselves to maintain order and increase survival. Marshall also hits back against the portrayal of the Bushmen in films such as The Gods Must Be Crazy. Sadly, most of what I knew about the Bushmen before reading this had been from the film, which was greatly misleading.
Tragically, this is also a heartbreaking book. Thirty years after she first visited the Bushmen, Marshall provided an update in the 1980s about how modernization had impacted the Bushmen. Due to drought and farmers wanting their land, many were forced into impoverished jobs or onto unsustainable farms and developed alcoholism and, reeling from the disruption of their social controls, did become violent. Reading about the horrific fates that befell most of the Bushmen that had been profiled in this book was gut wrenching.
Marshall talked about her brother's efforts to help the Bushmen develop more sustainable farms and tried to end on a positive note how even on the farms their culture is preserved in various forms, but also acknowledged the difficulties ahead for them.
I learned a lot from this book. It really enforced to me that life for hunter gatherers is more about survival than thriving and enforced the role of the environment in shaping human behavior. It also read more like a novel than an academic work at times, making it accessible to people who otherwise would not be interested. Highly recommend.
October 20, 2024
It’s only through the work of Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith, and his many references to Sir Laurens van der Post, that I became aware of the innocence and sensitivity of this ancient and quickly vanishing race. I think Max’s review (see below), written 10 years ago, does an excellent job of covering what I would like to say about this book. The only point I’d add is that Elizabeth Marshall Thomas and her family were obviously very special people themselves to be able to spend long periods of time with such an innocent race and make such accurate and unaffected observations of them. It must’ve been a very special time in the 1950’s in that incredibly remote part of Africa and I suspect for me, that’s a large part of the overall appeal of this wonderful read.
April 15, 2024
Brilliant, illuminating book about the Bushmen of the Kalahari desert in Botswana and South-West Africa. Hunter-gatherers, these people offer a fascinating insight into how all humans may once have lived.
Marshall Thomas writes beautifully about these people, telling their stories and telling their story. Anyone with any interest in anthropology, travel or early human history (or, indeed current human history - the end of the book is stunningly sad), should read the book.
Highly recommended.
Marshall Thomas writes beautifully about these people, telling their stories and telling their story. Anyone with any interest in anthropology, travel or early human history (or, indeed current human history - the end of the book is stunningly sad), should read the book.
Highly recommended.
March 30, 2023
This is the kind of book that makes me think humans, as a whole, are a failed species. The strongest and most ruthless among us will always dominate and eventually overpower less aggressive groups of people. Now, in the Industrial Age, we are doing the same thing to the global environment. It's our legacy.
January 4, 2018
One of the best books I have ever read. Fascinating look at a life style that no longer exist but one that all of ancestors came from. A detailed look at the hunter gatherers of the Kalahari. Sad to say the now extinct life of a peoples that were harmed beyond measure by modern civilization.
February 4, 2021
Updated in 1980s, written in 1950s when Thomas lived among the Kalahari Bushmen, fascinating, a world lost to the rest of us.
July 28, 2021
I agree 100% with The Atlantic’s review.
Want to read
March 15, 2023Paul graham rec
April 7, 2023
total waste - couldn't even finish it
May 13, 2023
This was very interesting to read about Kalahari Bushmen in Africa. I enjoy reading true stories as well and this was very informative.
November 8, 2024
Ok, just ok but it did bore me a bit
January 31, 2025
I read this book for Anthroplogy 101. I hated the class but I semi-enjoyed this book. An interesting read.
March 30, 2015
The author's family of anthropologists lived with the "Bushmen" of the Kalahari in the mid 1950's. An added chapter at the end tells of changes when she returned in the 1980's. She is observant and writes beautifully. Although young at the time, she is clearly well trained in her observations. She does not romanticize the hard life in the desert (including stories of people dying of hunger or thirst and a great hunter crippled by a snake bite) but one must respect the amazing skills of the people and the their culture. She acknowledges jealousies and hidden anger and demonstrates how the culture manages to diffuse these socially disruptive feelings to avoid violence. The culture had strong traditions/rules which allowed their survival in the desert environment for millennia. It is sad to see their culture being eroded as they are forced to give up their nomadic way and try to manage as farmers. The book includes photos from the 1950s which contrast sharply to photos I have seen of the Kalihari taken recently. In the 1950s there were grasses and bushes and a large variety of plants where now there is mostly just sand and thorn bushes. The result of cattle ranching, privatizing water sources, wars in nearby regions which displaces people and animals....
April 28, 2012
Excellent autobiographical account of the author's time spent living with the hunter/gatherer tribe of the African desert, the people who were featured in the movie "The God's Must be Crazy" (which by the way, according to the author, was a very poor portrayal of these people).
This book held me in thrall because in no way, by no stretch of my imagination, could I ever have imagined the lifestyle these people have. It is barren, without houses or washing machines or e-readers or teapots...or shoes...and full of humor and jealousy and rules and taboos...religion and oral history...
It's a smallish book, easily read in two or three sittings, and if you are like me you will come away from the experience wondering how these people will survive as technology and white farmers close in on their lifestyle. After I read this book I found myself noticing the things about my culture that would shock or amaze or dismay them.
I loved this book, and yet again I am shown through things that I read or my life experiences, that there's a huge difference between "need" and "want." I feel like this book helped me to downsize, be more frugal, less material, more simple.
This book held me in thrall because in no way, by no stretch of my imagination, could I ever have imagined the lifestyle these people have. It is barren, without houses or washing machines or e-readers or teapots...or shoes...and full of humor and jealousy and rules and taboos...religion and oral history...
It's a smallish book, easily read in two or three sittings, and if you are like me you will come away from the experience wondering how these people will survive as technology and white farmers close in on their lifestyle. After I read this book I found myself noticing the things about my culture that would shock or amaze or dismay them.
I loved this book, and yet again I am shown through things that I read or my life experiences, that there's a huge difference between "need" and "want." I feel like this book helped me to downsize, be more frugal, less material, more simple.
May 7, 2011
a historical look into a culture that, according to the author, is now all but extinct. I enjoyed the "detailed" glimpse into a peoples who lived so closely connected to their environment and so harmoniously in tune with the energies and elements that so effected them. It is sad to read the epilogue and discover what had happened to this specific group. Indeed, this book is more than an anthropological text showcasing a study of a group of subjects, but a memoir of sorts, carrying us into the world of several families and a community of people who laughed, feasted, played, danced and sang with ecstatic fervor before being denied the right to live in their ancestral land of over countless generations.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 21, 2013
Nonfiction. Excellent treatise on the bushmen of the Kalahari written in the 1950s. Where they are and how they are now in 2013 i do not know, but i am certain their lives have changed since the book was written. Maybe some good, some bad now. Then: Yaws. Women leaned over while standing to piss while men squatted. It was their law. Seeing the universe differently from this oppressive dominant culture, part of which you are reading this from, is neither wrong nor incorrect. They can survive and thrive where even your young people cannot. This is excellent anthropology that throws cultural relativism into high relief, and the author's work certainly helps me do my work of reclaiming being indigenous to this planet for myself.
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