Mythology of the San Bushmen of Southern Africa

Amongst the oldest continuing cultures on Earth, San Bushmen are indigenous peoples that make up the first nations of Southern Africa. San culture is rich in myth and lore, actively and expansively transmitted by storytellers. Mythology of the San Bushmen of Southern Africa gives an in-depth account of this fascinating mythology and its connections to the religion, social organization, and ecological adaptations of this erstwhile hunting-gathering people.

Drawing on a rich trove of archival research, ethnographic fieldwork, and oral traditions of the San, Mathias Guenther reveals the ongoing connections and interactions between actual, experienced reality and virtual, imagined myth time in the mythology and cosmology of San Bushmen. Their myth time was an age of inchoateness and of becoming inhabited by morally flawed human-animal hybrid beings, a state of ambiguity that finds its fullest embodiment in the trickster figure. In addition to this being's persona as prankster-protagonist, the San Bushman trickster is also a god. While not unique in mythologies around the world, the configuration of this secular-sacred trickster-god figure is distinctive among the San, along with other conflations--of human with animal and woman/wife with antelope/meat. San Bushmen of Southern Africa is a significant contribution to hunter-gatherer studies and places San mythology firmly in the context of world mythology.