Blood-group Investigation on Central Kalahari Bushmen

Abstract

DURING August–September 1958, an expedition organized by the Kalahari Committee of the University of the Witwatersrand (in which the Anthropology Laboratory of the Department of Human Anatomy, Oxford, participated) carried out anthropological, medical, dental and other investigations on Bushmen in the Central Kalahari. The anthropological interest of this study lies in the following: (a) two communities examined, some 70 miles south of Ghanzi, were living a primitive hunting and food-gathering existence and could be compared with a third group of Bushmen living on farms in the Ghanzi district; (b) the blood of Bushmen from the Kalahari region has not previously been grouped; hitherto all such data have been obtained from Bushmen of South-West Africa; (c) the antigens tested included the recently discovered Diego (the serum was kindly supplied by Dr. Layrisse) and also V and Js (sera kindly supplied by Dr. Eloise Giblett). Tests with anti-Diego sera were particularly apposite since some anthropologists have considered it possible that the Bushmen (and Hottentots), on account of their skin colour and frequent possession of an internal epicanthic fold, incorporate a Mongoloid component of distant or even recent derivation. There also is still uncertainty on the exact affinity of the Bushmen to existing Negroid populations. The V and Js antigens are common in Negro populations and therefore supplement information on Negro affinities afforded by other blood-group systems.