DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49271#0151
96
E. A. Hooton
Barrow31 says of the Hottentots: “Rather than to take the trouble of procuring
food by the chace, or by digging the ground for roots, they will cheerfully fast the whole
day provided they may be allowed to sleep. Instances frequently occurred in the course
of our journey, when our Hottentots have passed the day without a morsel of food, rather
than give themselves the trouble of walking half a mile to procure a sheep. Ten of our
Hottentots ate the whole carcase of a middle-sized ox, except the two hind legs, in three
days; but they had very little sleep during the time and had fasted the two preceding
days. With them the word is to eat or to sleep. When they cannot indulge in the grati-
fication of one, they generally find immediate relief in the arms of the other.”
The above quotations suggest that the Bushmen and Hottentots possess in a remark-
able degree the ability to alternate short periods of gorging with more prolonged periods
of fasting. During the period of fasting most of the time is spent in sleep, or at least
in a lethargic condition. Many primitive hunting and fishing peoples are able to abstain
from food for relatively long periods of time and are also ready to consume vast quanti-
ties of food at one sitting when it is available. Presumably, however, their periods of
fasting are not voluntary or due to laziness as sometimes seems to be true of the Bushmen
and Hottentots. There seems very little doubt that steatopygia is a special adaptation
whereby surplus food is stored up for subsequent absorption in the period of fasting. But
if this is the case it will be asked why steatopygia is not found among all hunting tribes
living under precarious conditions of subsistence analogous to the state of the Bushmen.
Why, for example, do not the Seri Indians of Lower California and the Central Australians
exhibit this character?
The present distribution of steatopygia is wholly confined to Africa, and it seems
certain that it is a character fixed by heredity in some of the most ancient Eur-African
racial stocks, and preserved in varying degrees in certain modern remnants of these
peoples by the uncertain food-getting conditions of desert environments. Thus it is
most pronounced among the desert-living Hottentot-Bushman group, less marked among
the forest-dwelling negrillos where food is more abundant, and is said to reappear again
among the desert-dwelling Somali.32 Could the possession of this especial adaptation
have been associated with the habit of hibernation or aestivation in any early human
stock? Steatopygia apparently characterized some of the peoples of the Upper Palaeo-
lithic in the rigorous climate of the glacial retreat. During the winters it must often have
been very difficult to obtain food. Long periods of abstention must frequently have been
31 J. Barrow, Travels into the interior of Southern Africa2, London, 1806, vol. 1, p. 102.
32 The evidence for steatopygia among the negrillos is very unsatisfactory. Revoil publishes drawings from
two photographs of Somali girls, one of whom seems to show a slight development of this character. M. G. Revoil,
‘Notes d’archeologie et d’ethnographie recueillies dans le Qomal’, (Rev. d’Ethnographie, I, 1882, p. 238, figs. 110,
111).
E. A. Hooton
Barrow31 says of the Hottentots: “Rather than to take the trouble of procuring
food by the chace, or by digging the ground for roots, they will cheerfully fast the whole
day provided they may be allowed to sleep. Instances frequently occurred in the course
of our journey, when our Hottentots have passed the day without a morsel of food, rather
than give themselves the trouble of walking half a mile to procure a sheep. Ten of our
Hottentots ate the whole carcase of a middle-sized ox, except the two hind legs, in three
days; but they had very little sleep during the time and had fasted the two preceding
days. With them the word is to eat or to sleep. When they cannot indulge in the grati-
fication of one, they generally find immediate relief in the arms of the other.”
The above quotations suggest that the Bushmen and Hottentots possess in a remark-
able degree the ability to alternate short periods of gorging with more prolonged periods
of fasting. During the period of fasting most of the time is spent in sleep, or at least
in a lethargic condition. Many primitive hunting and fishing peoples are able to abstain
from food for relatively long periods of time and are also ready to consume vast quanti-
ties of food at one sitting when it is available. Presumably, however, their periods of
fasting are not voluntary or due to laziness as sometimes seems to be true of the Bushmen
and Hottentots. There seems very little doubt that steatopygia is a special adaptation
whereby surplus food is stored up for subsequent absorption in the period of fasting. But
if this is the case it will be asked why steatopygia is not found among all hunting tribes
living under precarious conditions of subsistence analogous to the state of the Bushmen.
Why, for example, do not the Seri Indians of Lower California and the Central Australians
exhibit this character?
The present distribution of steatopygia is wholly confined to Africa, and it seems
certain that it is a character fixed by heredity in some of the most ancient Eur-African
racial stocks, and preserved in varying degrees in certain modern remnants of these
peoples by the uncertain food-getting conditions of desert environments. Thus it is
most pronounced among the desert-living Hottentot-Bushman group, less marked among
the forest-dwelling negrillos where food is more abundant, and is said to reappear again
among the desert-dwelling Somali.32 Could the possession of this especial adaptation
have been associated with the habit of hibernation or aestivation in any early human
stock? Steatopygia apparently characterized some of the peoples of the Upper Palaeo-
lithic in the rigorous climate of the glacial retreat. During the winters it must often have
been very difficult to obtain food. Long periods of abstention must frequently have been
31 J. Barrow, Travels into the interior of Southern Africa2, London, 1806, vol. 1, p. 102.
32 The evidence for steatopygia among the negrillos is very unsatisfactory. Revoil publishes drawings from
two photographs of Somali girls, one of whom seems to show a slight development of this character. M. G. Revoil,
‘Notes d’archeologie et d’ethnographie recueillies dans le Qomal’, (Rev. d’Ethnographie, I, 1882, p. 238, figs. 110,
111).