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Comment by buyx | Hacker News Reader

One of the more pernicious myths that continues to sustain ideological racism in South Africa (and its more vile outposts on the internet) is the terra nullius equivalent: that whites and Bantu-speaking blacks arrived in South Africa at the same time, and therefore large-scale dispossession of the black population didn't take place with the outward expansion of white colonials. The point about intermarriage with the San is interesting as well, because it falsifies another myth: that the dispossession of the San/Bushmen is an indication of moral equivalence between colonialists and the Bantu blacks.

Hopefully these sorts of studies, and some well constructed timelines clarify things and lay some of the self-delusion to rest.

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The Khoisan have occupied much of Africa for much of human history. [1] I don't know exactly how the Bantus displaced the people that they came across, but I suspect some form of foul play.

1: http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms6692

How would you explain the integration of Khoisan click consonants in Bantu languages if foul play was involved?

Things like that come from "cultural contact" which can be peaceful or violent.

You call it intermarriage between the San and the Bantu implying a nice peaceful union between the newcomers and the existing population. Do you know for certain that was how it was, the article didn't use the word intermarriage?

How do you know it was violent? We don't know for sure about a genocide, but we do know that the distinctive click consonants in some of the bigger South African Bantu languages were borrowed from Khoisan languages. If there was a genocide of Khoisan by Bantu speakers, how would these unusual sounds have permeated into the Bantu languages, along with the genes?

Of course, there is no written history, but it is an interesting contrast that Afrikaans-which recorded history unequivocally shows spreading in lockstep with violent dispossession-hasn't got any click consonants, despite developing in an area where click languages predominated (SW Cape), and despite having a fair amount of Khoisan stock in a big chunk of its native speaking population (Cape Coloureds).

>How do you know it was violent?

I don't but most peoples, like most animals are territorial and resist the movement of others into their territory.

Your language theory is interesting. But then the english language as spoken in many areas where it would be the language of the non-peaceful invader inherits from the local language. And getting on for half the words in the english language itself were adopted from the French language of the Normans invaders.

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