ABSTRACT Genetic analyses show that milch pastoralism existed in southern Africa for at least the last 1300 years. This paper addresses the question of how specialised milch pastoralists would have sustained their herds in the arid western half of southern Africa, where archaeological evidence shows their traces. This might be down to what Jared Diamond terms ‘geographic luck’, i.e. that pastoralists, whom we know moved rapidly to the southern and western Cape, discovered the winter rainfall and all year round rainfall areas that are unique in southern Africa and settled there. Good grazing and all year-round rainfall would have been found by moving between these zones and the summer rainfall zone of the neighbouring Northern and Eastern Cape Provinces. These zones fall outside the areas that were later settled by agropastoralist farmers. European mariner sightings of livestock along South Africa’s shores from the end of the fifteenth century AD onward have previously been used to reconstruct the seasonal movements of pastoralists. There is, however, an inherent bias in these data caused by the prevailing wind patterns that determined the timing of mariners’ arrival to the Cape.

中文翻译：

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在过去的2000年中，开普省独特的气候边界对维持南部非洲专业牧民的作用

摘要遗传分析表明，南部非洲至少已有近1300年的历史是牧业畜牧业。本文讨论的问题是，专门的牧民如何在南部非洲干旱的西部半部维持其畜群，那里的考古证据表明了他们的踪迹。这可能归因于Jared Diamond所说的“地理运气”，也就是说，众所周知的牧民迅速迁移到南部和西部的开普敦，他们发现了南部非洲独特的冬季降雨和全年降雨地区，并在那里定居。通过在这些区域与邻近的北开普省和东开普省的夏季降雨区之间移动，将会发现良好的放牧和全年的降雨。这些区域位于后来由农牧民定居的地区之外。从公元15世纪末开始，欧洲人在南非沿岸看到的牲畜被用来重建牧民的季节性运动。但是，这些数据存在固有的偏差，这是由确定海员到达海角时机的盛行风型引起的。