THE Bushmen of the Kalahari desert in southern Africa are known mainly as hunter-gatherers, but new evidence suggests that they were tending livestock almost 2000 years ago.
A zone infested by the tsetse fly, which carries diseases deadly to both humans and cattle, is thought to have blocked the spread of domesticated animals from Kenya into the Kalahari. The exact time when the animals eventually made it through has been elusive.
Now, Larry Robbins of Michigan State University in East Lansing and colleagues have dated cow bones from the Kalahari in northern Botswana to about 2000 years ago. The Bushmen…
