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Damara people
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Damara are a people who live in Namibia, a country in south-western Africa. They speak the Damara dialect of Nama.
In the 19th century they were known as Berg Damara or Bergdama, and the name Damara was used for Herero people who lived in Damaraland.
The explorer Francis Galton visited the Damaras in the 19th Century. He wrote:
The Damaras were for the most part thieving and murderous, dirty, and of a low type; but their chiefs were more or less highly bred. These people seldom die natural deaths; many are killed when fighting, many are murdered, and sick persons are as a rule smothered by their relatives.[1] ... When inquiries are made about how many days' journey off a place may be, their ignorance of all numerical ideas is very annoying. In practice, whatever they may possess in their language, they certainly use no numeral greater than three. When they wish to express four, they take to their fingers, which are to them as formidable instruments of calculation as a sliding-rule is to an English schoolboy. They puzzle very much after five, because no spare hand remains to grasp and secure the fingers that are required for " units." … When bartering is going on, each sheep must be paid for separately.[2]
Damaraland, a region of Namibia
- ^ http://galton.renoster.com/galton/galton/books/memories/chapter-X.html
- ^ Galton 1853: 81.
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