The Cimba , also spelled Tjimba, are a remote,
Herero-speaking hunter-gatherer
A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...
people of the
Kaokoveld
The Kaokoveld Desert is a coastal desert of northern Namibia and southern Angola.
Setting
The Kaokoveld Desert occupies a coastal strip covering , from 13° to 21°S and is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Namibian savanna woodla ...
desert in northwest
Namibia
Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...
and southwest
Angola
, national_anthem = " Angola Avante"()
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, capital = Luanda
, religion =
, religion_year = 2020
, religion_ref =
, coordina ...
, in the mountain ranges bordering the
Kunene River
The Cunene (Portuguese spelling) or Kunene (common Namibian spelling) is a river in Southern Africa. It flows from the Angola highlands south to the border with Namibia. It then flows west along the border until it reaches the Atlantic Ocean. It ...
. They continue to use
stone tool
A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric (particularly Stone Ag ...
s, and use ''
Adenium boehmianum
''Adenium boehmianum'', the Bushman poison, is a poisonous succulent endemic to the mostly dry regions of northern Namibia and southern Angola. The San people boil the root sap and latex to prepare arrow poison
Arrow poisons are used to poison ...
'' to poison their arrows.
Their
Herero
Herero may refer to:
* Herero people, a people belonging to the Bantu group, with about 240,000 members alive today
* Herero language, a language of the Bantu family (Niger-Congo group)
* Herero and Namaqua Genocide
* Herero chat, a species of b ...
neighbors portray them as Herero who have lost their cattle and are therefore impoverished, but they are a distinct people, both culturally and physically.
Indeed, physically they seem to be a remnant of an indigenous population of a southern African type—along with the
Kwadi, the
Kwisi, and the
Damara—that are unlike either the
San (Bushmen) or the Bantu Herero.
[Blench, Roger. 1999. "Are the African Pygmies an Ethnographic Fiction?". Pp 41–60 in Biesbrouck, Elders, & Rossel (eds.) ''Challenging Elusiveness: Central African Hunter-Gatherers in a Multidisciplinary Perspective''. Leiden.] The
mitochondrial DNA
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA or mDNA) is the DNA located in mitochondria, cellular organelles within eukaryotic cells that convert chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use, such as adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondrial D ...
of Tjimba who have been genetically tested is similar to that of
Himba,
Herero
Herero may refer to:
* Herero people, a people belonging to the Bantu group, with about 240,000 members alive today
* Herero language, a language of the Bantu family (Niger-Congo group)
* Herero and Namaqua Genocide
* Herero chat, a species of b ...
, and
Damara, suggesting that they descend (at least maternally) from the same Bantu ancestors.
References
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Ethnic groups in Namibia
Stone Age Africa
Hunter-gatherers of Africa