Again with Kumeyaay! What is it with me and the Kumeyaay? Oy, give it a rest already!
Err, yes. Well, with that out of the way ...
There's been a great deal of fussing about the Trump Administration allowing a couple dozen white South Africans to immigrate to America. Their government doesn't want to exterminate them yet, but it's keeping its options open when it comes to illing-kay all the itey-whays.
The problem, of course, is that the Boers and Brits were not indigenous to South Africa and were therefore colonializing and, of course, white. For that reason, illing-kay them might be just fine with some Americans.
But were they really not native to South Africa? How long do you need to be in a place before you're a native? It's been about 350 years now and that's less time than the Congolese have been in Dublin and you'd have to be a frothing racist to suggest that they needed illing-kay.
ChatGPT and I discussed this and I learned quite a few things. Here are some highlights.
The Khoisan groups were tiny. Typical group size: ~50 to 200 peopleThe Dutch arrived in South Africa in 1652. This marked the beginning of European colonization in South Africa. Over time, the Dutch settlers—known as Boers or Afrikaners—expanded into the interior, leading to the displacement and conflict with indigenous peoples such as the Khoikhoi and San.
The Khoikhoi were a pastoralist people who lived in what is now western South Africa and Namibia long before European contact. The Khoikhoi were not a “civilization” by any meaningful modern standard. They were a pre-modern, tribal society that functioned at a small scale.
The Khoisan, like many premodern peoples, lived in what anthropologists call a "low-complexity society"—small-scale, oral, decentralized, and mobile. Their lifestyle was stable, but not evolutionary in the technological sense. They were well adapted to their ecological niche, but that adaptation created no pathway toward the accumulated knowledge, division of labor, or urban density required to make a leap toward modern infrastructure, literacy, or abstract mathematics.
The hard truth is:
Two radically different societies cannot occupy the same land indefinitely once one possesses literacy, gunpowder, advanced agriculture, medicine, and infrastructure—and the other does not.
In such collisions, one side reshapes the landscape—economically, ecologically, and socially. The side that builds roads, ports, hospitals, farms, factories, and governments necessarily transforms the land, and that transformation pushes out or assimilates less complex societies. Not because of malice—though cruelty often accompanied it—but because civilization doesn’t pause...
When European settlers arrived, they weren’t facing a nation or kingdom—but a patchwork of small, independent groups. This made diplomacy inconsistent, military resistance disorganized, and long-term survival unlikely against a cohesive colonial enterprise.
The Khoisan were already near the ecological carrying capacity of their land given their lifestyle. Without major technological change—like adopting agriculture or irrigation—their population wasn't going to grow significantly, whether the Dutch came or not.
They were living in a closed-loop system, perfectly adapted to survive but incapable of scaling into a civilizational force.
Enter The Kumeyaay
Who does this sound like? Why, the Kumeyaay of San Diego, of course!
Both the Khoisan and the Kumeyaay were living in ecological and technological cul-de-sacs.
Their ways of life were fully maxed out—resilient in their narrow lanes, but with no path forward. And once industrial or even agrarian civilizations arrived, their systems were doomed.
- No surplus = No cushion = No future
- No food surplus meant no permanent settlements, no full-time artisans, no scholars, no soldiers.
- No written language, no metallurgy, no architectural tradition, no science.
- No capacity to scale—either demographically or militarily.
They were stable, not because of wisdom or balance, but because they were trapped by resource limits and minimal specialization.
The moment a society arrives that:
- Controls food through farming,
- Controls time through writing,
- Controls violence through hierarchy and metallurgy...
...it's game over. No matter how harmonious the tribe seems, that harmony is fragile, a static equilibrium that cannot defend itself.
| Category | Khoisan | Kumeyaay |
|---|---|---|
| Lifestyle | Hunter-gatherer and pastoralist | Hunter-gatherer and acorn-based* foragers |
| Political organization | Decentralized clans | Autonomous extended families (kwaaypaay) |
| Technological level | Stone age with herding (Khoikhoi only) | Stone age with plant-processing tech |
| Population density | Very low | Slightly higher, but still sparse |
| Military threat level | Minimal | Minimal, except occasional mission revolts |
| Trajectory | Static, sustainable, but capped | Static, sustainable, but capped |
It's not that the Dutch and the English were unusually cruel or imperial. It's that they were unusually successful.
 |
| This is not, as one might suspect, a Khoisan painting. It's actually Dutch! |
* - Acorn based?!? Good Lord. Could you imagine their banking system? Their ATMs would dispense ... acorns.
 |
| It reminds me of the Acorn District in Tokyo. |
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)