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Topnaar
The Topnaar people (ǂAonin) are a clan of the Nama people in Namibia. Their settlements are all situated on the Kuiseb River in the Erongo Region of central Namibia, the largest one is Utuseb. History Topnaars began settling in the area of Walvis Bay and along the Kuiseb River during the start of the 19th century. They first occupied the area at the mouth of the Swakop River, today the city of Swakopmund, and moved south beyond Walvis Bay to the Kuiseb mouth between 1820 and 1830. A small faction moved upriver to Sandfontein but was attacked and driven away by warriors of the Red Nation. They receded to Rooibank (''Scheppmannsdorf'' during Imperial Germany's colonial rule of South-West Africa). Missionary Heinrich Schmelen and Captain Amraal Lambert of the Kaiǀkhauan ( Khauas Nama) visited the Topnaar around 1824 or 1825 while searching for a hospitable place at the coast to improve logistics for the support of the missionaries in the hinterland. Culture and living con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Utuseb
Utuseb is a small settlement in the Erongo Region in western central Namibia. It is situated in the Namib Desert, approximately from Walvis Bay on the banks of Kuiseb River. Utuseb has approximately 700 inhabitants and belongs to the Walvis Bay Rural electoral constituency. The people living here belong to the ǂAonin (Southern Topnaar) community, a subtribe of the Nama people. History Topnaars began settling in the area of Walvis Bay and along the Kuiseb River during the start of the 19th century. They first occupied the area at the mouth of the Swakop River, today the city of Swakopmund, and moved south beyond Walvis Bay to the Kuiseb mouth between 1820 and 1830. A small faction moved upriver to Sandfontein but was attacked and driven away by warriors of the Red Nation. They receded to Rooibank (''Scheppmannsdorf'' during Imperial Germany's colonial rule of South-West Africa). Missionary Heinrich Schmelen and Captain Amraal Lambert of the Kaiǀkhauan ( Khauas Nama) visit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nama People
Nama (in older sources also called Namaqua) are an African ethnic group of South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. They traditionally speak the Nama language of the Khoe-Kwadi language family, although many Nama also speak Afrikaans. The Nama People (or Nama-Khoe people) are the largest group of the Khoikhoi people, most of whom have disappeared as a group, except for the Namas. Many of the Nama clans live in Central Namibia and the other smaller groups live in Namaqualand, which today straddles the Namibian border with South Africa. History For thousands of years, the Khoisan peoples of South Africa and southern Namibia maintained a nomadic life, the Khoikhoi as pastoralists and the San people as hunter-gatherers. The Nama are a Khoikhoi group. The Nama originally lived around the Orange River in southern Namibia and northern South Africa. The early colonialists referred to them as Hottentots. Their alternative historical name, "Namaqua", stems from the addition of the Kho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heinrich Schmelen
Reverend Johann Heinrich Schmelen, born Johann Hinrich Schmelen (7 January 1776 – 26 July 1848) was a German missionary and linguist who worked in South Africa and South-West Africa. Traveling through the area of today's northern South Africa and central and southern Namibia he founded the mission stations at Bethanie and Steinkopf and discovered the natural harbour at Walvis Bay. Together with his wife Zara he translated parts of the Bible into Khoekhoegowab (Damara/Nama) and published a dictionary. Early life and travel to Africa Schmelen was born into a middle-class family on 7 January 1776 in Kassebruch, today a suburb of Hagen im Bremischen in the German state of Lower Saxony. To evade conscription he went to London where was influenced by pastors of the German congregation. He wanted to become a missionary and was advised to attend the missionaries' seminary of pastor Jänicke in Berlin. After graduation he was sent to South Africa in 1811. He accompanied Christian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kuiseb River
The Kuiseb River is an ephemeral river in western-central Namibia. Its source is in the Khomas Highland west of Windhoek. From there it flows westwards through the Namib-Naukluft National Park and the Namib desert to Walvis Bay. Several settlements of the Topnaar people are on the banks of the lower Kuiseb, for instance Homeb, Sandfontein, Rooibank, and Utuseb. Inflows of the Kuiseb are Gomab, Ojab, Chausib, Gaub, Koam, Nausgomab and Goagos. The Kuiseb's catchment area (including its tributaries) is estimated to be between 15,500 and . It has a mean run-off of roughly . Friedenau Dam, built in 1972, is on the river. In January 2005, for the first time in years, the Kuiseb flowed to the ocean. Between Naukluft and Namib the Kuiseb carved out a canyon in a barren and inaccessible area. During World War II the area around the Kuiseb Canyon served as a shelter for Henno Martin and Hermann Korn who moved there to wait the war out. Two books and a film were subsequently publ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Empire
The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary empire led by an emperor, although has been used in German to denote the Roman Empire because it had a weak hereditary tradition. In the case of the German Empire, the official name was , which is properly translated as "German Empire" because the official position of head of state in the constitution of the German Empire was officially a "presidency" of a confederation of German states led by the King of Prussia who would assume "the title of German Emperor" as referring to the German people, but was not emperor of Germany as in an emperor of a state. –The German Empire" ''Harper's New Monthly Magazine''. vol. 63, issue 376, pp. 591–603; here p. 593. also referred to as Imperial Germany, the Second Reich, as well as simply Germany, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ǃNara Melon
''Acanthosicyos horridus'' is an unusual melon that is endemic to the Namib desert. In English it is known as Nara, butter-nuts, or butterpips; in one of the Khoisan languages it is locally called or ("!" is pronounced with a click, somewhat like the "tsk" when English people are tutting, tsk-tsk). Description It is a dioecious, leafless, phreatophyte (meaning its roots penetrate deep down to water near the water table) that is found in sandy deserts but not stony plains, in areas with access to ground water such as ephemeral rivers and paleochannels, where sand accumulating in the shelter of its stems can form hummocks up to 1000–1500 m2 in area and 4 meters in height. Its stems may rise more than a meter above the hummocks, while its system of thick taproots can extend up to 50 m downward. The plant is leafless, so modified stems and spines 2–3 centimetres long serve as the photosynthetic "organs" of the plant. The plant can survive many years without water. Ecolo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amraal Lambert
Amraal Lambert, Nama name: ǂGaiǀnub, (ca. 1774 – 13 February 1864) was the first Captain of the Kaiǀkhauan ( Khauas Nama), a subtribe of the Orlam, in the eastern area of Namaland, today's Namibia. Amraal Lambert was born around 1774 near Hex River in the Clanwilliam district in the Cape Colony (today's South Africa). A Cape Khoikhoi descendant, his status was little better than that of a slave, and he was forced to work in Worcester and Cape Town in his youth. In 1814 Lambert moved to Namaland (today's eastern-central Namibia), accompanied by missionary Heinrich Schmelen, who baptised him in Bethanie in 1815. Schmelen and the Kaiǀkhauan group led by Lambert stayed together for 14 more years but Schmelen closed the missionary station in Bethanie in 1822 and travelled on. Lambert accompanied Schmelen on his travel to Walvis Bay in 1825. Between 1830 and 1860, Amraal Lambert and his cousin Jonker Afrikaner controlled much of southern and central South-West Africa. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tribal Chief
A tribal chief or chieftain is the leader of a tribal society or chiefdom. Tribe The concept of tribe is a broadly applied concept, based on tribal concepts of societies of western Afroeurasia. Tribal societies are sometimes categorized as an intermediate stage between the band society of the Paleolithic stage and civilization with centralized, super-regional government based in cities. Anthropologist Elman Service distinguishes two stages of tribal societies: simple societies organized by limited instances of social rank and prestige, and more stratified societies led by chieftains or tribal kings ( chiefdoms). Stratified tribal societies led by tribal kings are thought to have flourished from the Neolithic stage into the Iron Age, albeit in competition with urban civilisations and empires beginning in the Bronze Age. In the case of tribal societies of indigenous peoples existing within larger colonial and post-colonial states, tribal chiefs may represent their tribe or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Red Nation (Namibia)
The Red Nation ( naq, Khaiǁkhaun) is the main subtribe of the Nama people in Namibia and the oldest Nama group speaking Khoekhoegowab, the language often called Damara/Nama. The main settlement of the Red Nation is Hoachanas, a small settlement in southern central Namibia, today part of the Hardap Region. History Pre–colonial period The word ''Khaiǁkhaun'' means "great defender" in Khoekhoe, from ǁkhau, "defend". There is no agreement as to where the name ''Red Nation'' originated from. Heinrich Vedder claims that the Khaiǁkhaun called themselves ǀAwa-khoi, "red people", whereas Klaus Dierks declares that the Europeans later nicknamed the tribe ''Red Nation''. In any case, the attribution is a reference to their slightly reddish face color. The first Kaptein of the Khaiǁkhaun was ǂHâb who unified most of the Nama clans at the end of the 17th century. After ǂHâb's death in 1710 the ǁKhauǀgoan (Swartbooi Nama) and the ǂKharoǃoan (Keetmanshoop Nama) were the fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 east. Although it does not border Zimbabwe, less than 200 metres (660 feet) of the Botswanan right bank of the Zambezi River separates the two countries. Namibia gained independence from South Africa on 21 March 1990, following the Namibian War of Independence. Its capital and largest city is Windhoek. Namibia is a member state of the United Nations (UN), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the African Union (AU) and the Commonwealth of Nations. The driest country in sub-Saharan Africa, Namibia has been inhabited since pre-historic times by the San, Damara and Nama people. Around the 14th century, immigrating Bantu peoples arrived as part of the Bantu expansion. Since then, the Bantu groups, the largest being the Ovambo, h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
