ABSTRACT
Hunting and foraging were central economic activities for many African people. Indeed, they are the original human activities, displaced and limited by developments such as pastoralism and agriculture, and until quite recently, parts of Africa offered groups who still subsisted in this manner. The best known may be the Khoi-San peoples of the Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa and the various pygmy groups of the central African rain forests, who have become almost legendary as living embodiments of a primordial way of life, but across the continent we find smaller, specialized hunting groups now assimilated into sedentary societies, preserving the traditions of a former way of life. Sometimes these groups retain a specific ethnic or professional identity within the larger culture. Elsewhere, hunting has become the profession of specialized groups whose members are subject to initiation and ritual constraints. Everywhere, hunting is associated with power of some sort, and hunters are figures of legend and adventure. They are credited not only with courage and skill, the qualities required to explore the unknown bush and to face large and fierce animals, but also with great occult knowledge and power, which are required to overcome the dangers of the unseen world and to protect men who deal in the death of other creatures.
