The San people are the African tribe from that are along the Kalahari Desert in Namibia, Botswana and South Africa. You may have seen the film The Gods Must Be Crazy years ago which featured the tribe and it's unique "clicking" talk. (Other tribes including the Xhosa - Mandela's tribe - in South Africa include "clicking" as well.) After years of research scientists now believe the San people started it all and life grew outward from there.
The San people of southern Africa, who have lived as hunter-gatherers for thousands of years, are likely to be the oldest population of humans on Earth, according to the biggest and most detailed analysis of African DNA. The San, also known as bushmen, are directly descended from the original population of early human ancestors who gave rise to all other groups of Africans and, eventually, to the people who left the continent to populate other parts of the world.The unfortunate story of the modern San is that they are a smaller tribe today and treated quite poorly throughout southern Africa. In Botswana they are thrown off their land by the government and resettled, forcefully sometimes. It just so happens their traditional lands have mining value. I never quite understood the full reasons for why they were treated so poorly when I was there though I suspect it has to do with being crowded out by much larger tribes who are vying for power.
A study of 121 distinct populations of modern-day Africans has found that they are all descended from 14 ancestral populations and that the differences and similarities of their genes closely follows the differences and similarities of their spoken languages.
Most people know the San people as "bushmen" though despite what is written in some of the media stories related to this research, "bushman" is a derogatory name used by others and considered offensive by the San people.
