ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the San, who are indigenous to Southern Africa, utilize their remarkable wayfinding practices while paying particular attention to how they mark, or do not mark, the environment. Two groups of San, the G | ui and Gǁana, have lived in the central part of the Kalahari Desert, although Botswana's development program has had a major impact on their lifestyle. In 1961, the Bechuanaland Protectorate established the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), which spreads over an area of 52,000 km. Cultural meanings that appear in G | ui/Gǁana everyday practices cannot be understood correctly by analyzing the semantic structure of their folk knowledge alone. It is also necessary to scrutinize the pragmatic structure of such knowledge, developed through social interactions embedded in the natural environment. Kitamura notes that one of the most fundamental characteristics of human activity is that a certain part of the environment is perceived in a way that is directly linked to a specific human behavior.
