c. 1480 (before Dias)
Khoekhoe pastoral communities occupy the Cape before recorded Portuguese contact
By the late fifteenth century, Khoekhoe pastoral communities already used the southwestern Cape’s pastures, water and seasonal grazing routes that Portuguese mariners would soon encounter.
By the late fifteenth century, pastoral communities later known in European sources as “Hottentots,” and in much recent scholarship as Khoekhoe, already occupied and used the southwestern Cape’s pastures, water points and seasonal grazing routes. Their herds of sheep and cattle structured movement across the peninsula and adjacent west and south coasts—the same resource landscape Portuguese crews would meet within a decade.
Archaeology places domestic stock in southern Africa far earlier than that first documented European contact. Biomolecular work dates domesticated sheep to about two thousand years before the present, and Western Cape sites such as Kasteelberg show long sequences of herding, pottery and coastal resource use. Scholars continue to debate whether herding arrived mainly through the migration of Khoe-speaking pastoralists, through local foragers’ adoption of stock, or through both, and how permeable the boundary between herder and hunter-gatherer economies remained.
When Bartolomeu Dias and, later, Vasco da Gama called along the coast, they encountered pastoral communities using the region’s pastures, water points and seasonal routes. Later Portuguese clashes at Table Bay, including the 1510 Salt River fighting, involved disputes over livestock, water and the terms of shore contact.
Significance
South Africa was populated by the First peoples long before Europeans and Bantu-speaking communities arrived.
Why it matters
Pastoral land use, livestock and seasonal grazing shaped the southwestern Cape landscape encountered by early Portuguese voyages.
Disputed interpretations
Archaeology places domestic stock in southern Africa roughly two millennia before Dias, but scholars disagree on how herding spread (migration of Khoe-speaking pastoralists, adoption by local foragers, or both) and on how sharply “herder” and “forager” communities can be separated in the record. This entry marks established presence before documented European contact, not a single settlement event.
Terminology notes
Portuguese and later Dutch writers often used “Hottentots” for the Cape’s pastoral peoples. Many recent scholars prefer “Khoekhoe” (also “Khoekhoen”) for those communities; “San” is commonly used for hunter-gatherer neighbours historically labelled “Bushmen.” The labels describe overlapping and shifting economies as well as identities.