economy: The Americas 313 clan, or tribe Not much is known about the economic lives of the medieval Khoisan people, although archaeologists have been slowly filling in some of the information The eastern Khoisan traded with the cities of the east coast, providing animal skins, ivory, milk, and beef to the cities in exchange for pottery, beads, and cereals As with the peoples of western and central Africa, their culture had a component of social banking, with mutual obligations among people forming the nucleus of kinship The San of southwestern Africa were mostly hunter-gatherers who either moved across the land in small groups or lived in small villages from which they would forage Climate and geography affected the choices they made, with people living in the desert tending to move frequently to find water and food and those living in wet areas tending to settle in one place and venture forth for days at a time to hunt and gather food to bring home It seems that from their first encounters, Europeans misjudged the San Because they rarely wore clothing and lived in small huts, the San appeared primitive and unsophisticated, but they were intelligent traders who formed a complex economic system Each San community was relatively self-sufficient, but importation of salt from the north was vital for many of the people of the Kalahari Their need for salt often brought them into contact with the Hausa and other peoples of the Congo River region The peoples south of the Congo River area tended to be settled folk who raised crops and kept cattle, and they often intruded into areas the San considered their own, resulting in inconclusive wars In spite of occasional hostilities, the San often found work among the farmers and herders, earning material goods and social banking The San had more than their labor to trade; in whatever environment they happened to live, they exploited the natural resources This meant that people living near rivers and lakes could get clay with which to make pottery, those living in grasslands or the forest could collect animal skins, and those who lived along the west coast could gather sea salt they created through evaporation of small human-made ponds With their various surplus products, San communities traded with each other and their neighbors The common language they maintained throughout their vast territory enhanced the San’s ability to trade among themselves, and many San also spoke the languages of their neighbors City-States and Empires Southern Africa of Among the most poorly understood cultures of medieval Africa are those of the city-states and empires of the southern African interior, including the people who built Great Zimbabwe, the stone monuments that were once the heart of a large city on the Zimbabwean plateau Foremost among these peoples may have been the Shona, who seem to have begun conquering their neighbors early in the medieval era They created empires that had vigorous economies based on farming, manufacturing of household goods, and trade, mostly with the city-states on the east coast Great Zimbabwe was once considered the capital of a single empire centered on the Zimbabwean plateau However, with the discovery in the 1970s of another stone capital at Manekweni in the lowlands, archaeologists began to realize that the Shona and other local peoples actually formed several empires that stretched from the modern-day nation of Zimbabwe almost to the Kalahari, encompassing forests and grasslands as well as tens of thousands of people More than 150 additional sites of stone structures built like Great Zimbabwe have been found The ruler of Great Zimbabwe seems to have been the most powerful monarch of the region, a sort of king of kings who exacted tribute and military cooperation from the lesser monarchs Much speculation but little hard data surround the economies of these empires Based on archaeological discoveries the territories appear to have spread in bands from east to west This territorial structure could have been shaped by the necessities of trade: The rulers focused on the movement of goods from east and west and on ensuring that the goods passed westward into the interior or eastward to the seaports as quickly as possible The governments exacted tariffs on all goods entering and leaving their territories—a double payment for anyone seeking to pass safely through an empire without stopping to trade The wealth of an empire, and hence of its ruler, depended on making sure that traders could pass through their lands securely, and thus well-trained armies were maintained to protect them Outside the imperial borders were mostly nomadic pastoralists such as the Khoisan These peoples were subdued by the imperial armies but not necessarily absorbed into the borders of the empires Instead they paid tribute to their powerful neighbors This was not an entirely one-sided arrangement, because the pastoralists gained access to trade goods in larger quantities than they otherwise would have, and they found buyers of their goods who might never have ventured among the pastoralists without the security of provided by the military forces of the empires The Americas by Michael J O’Neal During the millennium following the ancient period until contact with European explorers and conquerors, the economic systems of the Americas in many respects differed little from the systems that had prevailed in earlier times