The Old Way

The Old Way: A Story of the First People (2006) by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

This book is about a tribe of hunter/gatherers in the Kalahari. The people are the Ju/wasi (also known as Bushmen or San). They lived in the Nyae Nyae area (about 100 miles west of the Okavango Swamp).

The book is written in two parts.

The first part describes how the Ju/wasi lived The Old Way, as had their ancestors for many thousands of years. These are a people who literally were living in balance with nature, and, if they had been left alone, could have done so in perpetuity.

The Old Way should not be romanticized. It was an incredibly difficult life where people routinely suffered thirst and starvation. Hunters suffered terrible injuries from encounters with dangerous animals. People lost limbs from poisonous snakebites. In the hardest times, women were forced to practice infanticide.

The Ju/wasi gathered nuts, dug tubers, etc. for most of their rations. They hunted several species of antelopes for the food they desired most. They used poisoned arrows to bring down the antelopes, although there were a few exceptional hunters who could literally run down an antelope and kill it with their bare hands.

This first part of the book is one of the best non-fiction works I have ever read. I would be willing to buy this part of the book. It is worth reading over and over.

The second part of the book is a thoroughly depressing account of how rich white liberals ruined the lives of the Ju/wasi.

Here is one example: The area where the Ju/wasi lived was turned into a game preserve where the Ju/wasi were no longer allowed to hunt. Then rich white liberals illegally poached the game with rifles.

It confirms my own view that Europeans were (and still are) a plague upon the Earth.

I realize that the second part of the book is necessary to tell the story of the people. But I would never read the second part again.