The frequently stated yet unexamined assumption in the debate surrounding the acquisition of livestock by hunter-gatherers in southern Africa is that this transition was about a subsistence change to food production. This interpretation ignores the archaeological evidence that hunter-gatherers remained hunter-gatherers on acquisition of stock. It also overlooks the ethnographic and historical evidence surrounding the relationships between humans and animals in Africa (and beyond), both today and in the past. Amongst the majority of the continent’s people, the primary value of domestic animals is their social and ritual value. Across all subsistence categories in eastern and southern Africa – hunter-gatherer, agro-pastoralist and pastoralist – there is a strong and well-documented shared resistance to slaughtering livestock. This has implications for our understanding of the uptake of stock by hunter-gatherers in southern African 2000 years ago and its comparison to Neolithic transitions in other parts of the world.
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