The Dobe !Kung

A case study of the !Kung San, foragers of the Kalahari Desert of northwestern Botswana. The Kalahari and its relative isolation provided an environment, over millennia, that nourished a significant foraging culture and insulated it from heavy penetration and influence by the outside world.In the early 1960s, Richard Lee encountered a group of !Kung who were living almost entirely by hunting and gathering. This made it possible for him to study the !Kung foraging adaptation, one critically important in human evolution, as a whole and intact way of life.Lee tries to let the people speak for themselves. Complex matters are often presented through dialogue with principal !Kung characters, so that the meaning of things to them is made clear at the same time that important technical points are made to come alive.