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, which is sufficient for hunting l ...

'' to poison their arrows. Their Herero 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 DN ...

of Tjimba who have been genetically tested is similar to that of Himba, Herero, and Damara, suggesting that they descend (at least maternally) from the same Bantu ancestors.

References

{{authority control Ethnic groups in Namibia Stone Age Africa Hunter-gatherers of Africa