Kalahari Debate

The Kalahari Debate is a series of back and forth arguments that began in the 1980s amongst anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians about how the San people and hunter-gatherer societies in southern Africa have lived in the past.

On one side of the debate were scholars led by Richard Borshay Lee and Irven DeVore, considered traditionalists or "isolationists."

They interpret cave paintings in Tsodilo Hills, and they also use artifacts such as faunal remains of cattle or sheep found at San sites.

[1] Traditionalists, including Richard Lee and other anthropologists, view the San as maintaining this old but adaptable way of life, even in the face of changing external circumstances.

He was puzzled as to how these people seemed to be living such an easy and happy life that relied heavily on hard work and the availability of food.

He was adopted into a kinship and given the name /Tontah which meant “White-Man.” He claims that the San were an isolated hunter-gatherer society that changed to farming and foraging at the end of the 1970s.

He believes this is why Richard Lee's views are flawed, and also why he[clarification needed] is saying that the San are incorporated in a wider political economy in southern Africa.

However, artifacts and ecofacts have been found at southern African sites that could help prove the revisionist view of the San people.

Their strongest supporting site is in the Tsodilo Hills, where rock art displays San looking over Bantu cattle.

Lee would counter-argue every point that Wilmsen would make, saying either that he made mistakes in research or presents conclusions with little evidence to support them.

[citation needed] One specific instance is where Lee called out Wilmsen for mistaking the word “oxen” for “onins”, which meant “onions” in an old map of the Kalahari region.

Another attack on Wilmsen's work was that the amounts of pottery and iron found in Dobe and Botswana regions were so small they could fit in one hand.

The small numbers of cattle bone fragments found on San archaeological sites have made scholars question Wilmsen's argument.