In Southern Africa, why did the Bantu have a greater resistance to smallpox than the Khoisan?

John Davis

Banned
In Cape Colony, smallpox epidemics ravaged the Khoisan tribes, but didn’t affect the Bantu to the same extent. Why is this?
 
Bantu civilization had cities and domesticated animals--and therefore, plagues. The Khoisan did not, and so didn't have such hardy immune systems.

At least, that's my guess.
 
I believe that there was also some mixing between the Bantu and various traders on the east coast in the middle ages. Those genes may have been spread through the Bantu population over the subsequent centuries.
 
If I had a guess, the bantu peoples were hit nastily by smallpox-just as people in Kenya were (or that might have been measles...point is, not a lot of immunity).

However, the fact that their land was not good for European crops gave them a respite from the European invasion for a little time, which allowed them to recover.

In addition, IIRC early modern southern Africa got somewhat cut off from Indian Ocean trade routes due to the disruption of the Portuguese and others-which would mean less slave trading-but still had maize introduced by Europeans, allowing for a boom in population growth which would not be as badly counteracted by the slave trade as happened in west Africa.

In addition, the Khoisan were at least partially dependent on gathered wild plants. Environmental disruption caused by European settlement such as the introduction of invasive insects and plants could disrupt their ability to gather food, and leave them in some ways more vulnerable food wise than the bantu people who could create large stocks of stored food through agriculture for the bad times, be those bad times disease, drought, or war.

EDIT: There is no magical smallpox resistance gene people. Any group of people-Native American, black European, or Asian who are isolated from this disease will die in very large numbers when re-exposed.
 
They also had some, not a lot, but some trade and that made them get the disease far earlier. The people's on the Cape bordered on two side by freezing ocean and another by the oldest desert in the world. Seriously the Namib existed when Dinosaurs where still around. The only real trade route and partners that they possibly would have had make the Balkans look like the Walton family. They were sadly SOL by the time Europe cam knocking.
 

Brunaburh

Gone Fishin'
Low population density means that there are less people to take care of you when you are sick. We often forget that one of the main reasons people die of sickness is that nobody is looking after them.
 
EDIT: There is no magical smallpox resistance gene people. Any group of people-Native American, black European, or Asian who are isolated from this disease will die in very large numbers when re-exposed.

There is some research that indicates that the CCR5-D32 allele that was being analyzed in relation to HIV resistance in European populations may confer some smallpox resistance although the research is far from certain. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14645720 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC299980/

Not sure it's necessarily the answer to the prompt but it's not something to dismiss outright.
 
Cow pox = small pox vaccine.

Did the Bantu in these areas have cows?

Yes. IIRC, by the time the Dutch landed on the Cape, cows had spread throughout all of Sub-Saharan Africa. The Bantu didn't spread further south because the rain and climate wasn't sufficient for the tropical crops they planted, but I wonder if the Dutch would've even been able to set up a substantial presence in the Cape region if the people they first ran into were more numerous and disease resistant Bantu tribes?
 
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