page_title: Botswana
section_title: Early history
hierarchical_section_title: Botswana / History / Early history
caption_attribution_description: English: The 'Two Rhino' painting at Tsodilo.
context_page_description: Botswana, officially the Republic of Botswana, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Formerly the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, Botswana adopted its name after becoming independent within the Commonwealth on 30 September 1966. Since then, it has been a representative republic, with a consistent record of uninterrupted democratic elections and the lowest perceived corruption ranking in Africa since at least 1998. It is currently Africa's oldest continuous democracy. Botswana is topographically flat, with up to 70 percent of its territory being the Kalahari Desert. It is bordered by South Africa to the south and southeast, Namibia to the west and north, and Zimbabwe to the northeast. Its border with Zambia to the north near Kazungula is poorly defined but is, at most, a few hundred metres long.
  A mid-sized country of just over 2.3 million people, Botswana is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. Around 10 percent of the population lives in the capital and largest city, Gaborone.
context_section_description: Archaeological digs have shown that hominids have lived in Botswana for around two million years. Stone tools and fauna remains have shown that all areas of the country were inhabited at least 400,000 years ago. In October 2019, researchers reported that Botswana was the birthplace of all modern humans about 200,000 years ago. Evidence left by modern humans such as cave paintings are about 73,000 years old. The original inhabitants of southern Africa were the Bushmen (San) and Khoi peoples. Both speak Khoisan languages and hunted, gathered, and traded over long distances. When cattle were first introduced about 2000 years ago into southern Africa, pastoralism became a major feature of the economy, since the region had large grasslands free of tsetse fly.
  It is unclear when Bantu-speaking peoples first moved into the country from the north, although AD 600 seems to be a consensus estimate. In that era, the ancestors of the modern-day Kalanga moved into what is now the north-eastern areas of the country. These proto-Kalanga were closely connected to states in Zimbabwe as well as to the Mapungubwe state and the notable of these was Domboshaba ruins which is a cultural and heritage site in Botswana originally occupied towards the end of the Great Zimbabwe period (1250–1450 AD) with stone walls that have an average height of 1.8 metres.. The site is a respected place for the people living in the region and it is believed that the chief lived on the top of the hill together with his helpers or assistants. These states, located outside of current Botswana's borders, appear to have kept massive cattle herds in what is now the Central District—apparently at numbers approaching modern cattle density. This massive cattle-raising complex prospered until 1300 AD or so, and seems to have regressed following the collapse of Mapungubwe. During this era, the first Tswana-speaking groups, the Bakgalagadi, moved into the southern areas of the Kalahari. All these various peoples were connected to trade routes that ran via the Limpopo River to the Indian Ocean, and trade goods from Asia such as beads made their way to Botswana most likely in exchange for ivory, gold, and rhinoceros horn.Toutswemogala Hill Iron Age Settlement's radio-carbon dates for this settlement range from 7th to late 19th century AD indicating occupation of more than one thousand years. The hill was part of the formation of early states in Southern Africa with cattle keeping as major source of economy. Toutswe settlement include house-floors, large heaps of vitrified cow-dog and burials while the outstanding structure is the stone wall. There are large traits of centaurs ciliaris, a type of grass which has come to be associated with cattle-keeping settlements in South, Central Africa.Around 700 A.D., the Toutswe people moved westward into Botswana and began an agricultural and pastoral land tenure system based on sorghum and millet, and domesticated stock, respectively. The site was situated in the center of a broader cultural area in Eastern Botswana and shares many commonalities with other archaeological sites of this region, in both ceramic production styles and also timeframes inhabited. Large structures were observed that contained vitrified remains of animal dung, leading to the theory that these were animal enclosures and that Toutswemogala Hill was thus a major center of animal husbandry in the region. However, agriculture also played a vital role in the longevity of Toutswemogala Hill's extended occupation, as many grain storage structures have also been found on the site.  Many different stratified layers of housing floors further signal continuous occupation over hundreds of years.
  The arrival of the ancestors of the Tswana-speakers who came to control the region has yet to be dated precisely. Members of the Bakwena, a chieftaincy under a legendary leader named Kgabo II, made their way into the southern Kalahari by AD 1500, at the latest, and his people drove the Bakgalagadi inhabitants west into the desert. Over the years, several offshoots of the Bakwena mov
caption: The 'Two Rhino' painting at Tsodilo,a UNESCO World Heritage Site
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