Talk:Khoisan culture

Plans for this article

As I understand it, the term "Khoisan" is something of a catch-all for the ethnic groups in southern Africa who speak click languages and are not Bantu. Do these groups have enough in common for an article to make sense? What kind of attractions or advice do we anticipate this article including? —Granger (talk · contribs) 12:20, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Possibly, we could have articles for Khoikhoi culture and San culture respectively. /Yvwv (talk) 14:42, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

The article doesn't have enough content at the moment to be divided, IMO. But if the article became larger, then dividing between Khoikhoi culture and San culture would be a good idea. --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 04:49, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

But let's address Granger's concerns over a lack of similarities. It seems to me this could be the equivalent of a "non-Germanic Europe" article, pretending that Slavs and Celts, Latin peoples and Turks etc are defined in opposition to what they are not, i.e. Germanic, and pretending like that makes them and their cultures the same.

So is there such a thing as a unified Khoisan culture? ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 08:26, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

That analogy captures my concern. According to Wikipedia, both the Khoekhoe and the San/Bushmen were traditionally nomadic or semi-nomadic, so they have that in common, I guess. But I don't know if they have enough in common (from a traveller's perspective) for an article like this to make sense.

Currently the article has absolutely no travel-related information, which isn't promising.

I know a little about traditional Bushman (San) culture from a book I read called The Old Way. It was very interesting but sadly gave me the impression that many aspects of the traditional culture have been destroyed by misguided government policies, at least in Namibia. It would be very interesting to know what aspects of Bushman culture can still be experienced by travellers, and where. But I'm not at all convinced that it makes sense to lump them together with the Khoekhoe. —Granger (talk · contribs) 08:58, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

I recommend The Harmless People by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas for an account of a way of life then under threat. It's a beautiful book. But as for this "Wikivoyage article", it is nothing of the kind, and unless anyone can figure out a travel-related angle on this, I would recommend deleting the article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:54, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

I voted delete, but would not oppose the creation of separate Khoekhoe and San articles, if anybody wants to do the legwork. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:26, 26 October 2018 (UTC)