Archaeology and Genetic History
The Hadza are not closely related to any other people. The Hadza language was once classified with the Khoisan languages because it has clicks, but there is no real evidence they are related, and Hadza is now usually considered an isolate. Genetically, the Hadza do not appear to be particularly closely related to other Khoisan-language-speakers: even the Sandawe, who live just 150 km away, diverged from the Hadza more than 15,000 years ago. Genetic testing also suggests significant admixture has occurred between the Hadza and Bantu, Nilotic and Cushitic-speaking populations in the last few thousand years. Today a small number of Hadza women marry into neighbouring groups such as the Bantu Isanzu and the Nilotic Datoga, but these marriages often fail and the woman and her children return to the Hadza. In previous decades rape or capture of Hadza women by outsiders seems to have been common. The reverse situation (Hadza men marrying non-Hadza women) is very rare today, probably because their neighbours view the Hadza as having low status, although during a famine in 1918-20 some Hadza men are reported as taking Isanzu wives.
The Hadza's ancestors have probably lived in their current territory for a very long time. Hadzaland is just 50 km from Olduvai Gorge, an area sometimes called the "Cradle of Mankind" because of the number of hominin fossils found there, and 40 km from the prehistoric site of Laetoli. Archaeological evidence suggests that the area has been continuously occupied by hunter gatherers much like the Hadza since at least the beginning of the Later Stone Age, 50,000 years ago. Although they do not make rock art today, several rock art sites within their territory, probably at least two thousand years old, are considered by the Hadza to have been created by their ancestors, and their own oral history does not suggest they moved to Hadzaland from elsewhere.
Read more about this topic: Hadza People, History
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