Who Were the Ancestors of the Namibian !Xoon? A Preliminary Approach Based on Oral and Selected Written Sources

Namibian !Xoon have remained unheeded to the greatest possible extent, both within the otherwise large amount of anthropological publications on the San and within Namibian historiography. They speak a dialect of the Taa language within the Tuu language family (formerly Southern Khoisan) and currently live in the wider Aminuis area southeast of Gobabis. The article approaches the history of the Namibian !Xoon before 1920 by looking at selected written sources and discussing the information on an array of ethnonyms for San groupings therein in the light of recently documented oral accounts according to which the !Xoon originate from further south.