Talk:Hadza people

Requested move
Rational: Names of nationalities in Wikipedia do not generally include morphology from the source language. E.g., Swahili people, not Waswahili. Both "Hadza" and "Hadzabe" are commonly used in English, so there is no cultural consensus for the latter. (-be'e is just the feminine plural in Hadza, equivalent to wa- in Swahili.) This is parallel to language articles, e.g. Swahili language, not Kiswahili, which is a redirect. kwami 01:50, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with the noms reasoning. -- Tλε Rαnδom Eδιτor  ( tαlk ) 21:03, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

removed section
I removed the following section:


 * Haine (lunar)


 * Haine's gender is not consequent in the various tales and myths: sometimes she is regarded as a female, or even Ischoko's wife, but more often he is presented as a man. In a myth the roles are reversed:

"Haine" can only be masculine, as Hadza has grammatical gender: the feminine would be "Haineko". Ishoko is feminine. I'd also like to see evidence that Haine is anything but God in a monotheistic religion. kwami (talk) 17:43, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Dear Kwamikagami,

Thank You for Your message and also the patience afterwards. The topic is very sophisticated, therefore my answer is yet very fragmented, but as two weeks has already passed, I do not wait longer with it:

User:Physis/Spiritual culture of the Hadzabe‎

For summary: As the sources and references that have been included in the article by now do not seem for me to support Your proposals yet, I'd like to restore I have tried to summarize my arguments in the answer. But I think there are several ways to include Your proposals into the article, I tried to describe such ways in my answer (linked above).
 * terming Haine as "mythological figure", not as God,
 * using Kohl-Larsen's original transcription system, and avoid any ad hoc modification. (I am not against a consequent update for a modern transcription system, if it is done coherently and with expert knowledge in Hadza language and phonetics)
 * mentioning of the ambiguity of Haine's and Ischoko's gender in the folklore source texts, as Kohl-Larsen (and the many online academical Russian sources citing him) emphasizes this ambiguity.

I suppose You have much knowledge on Hadza language, I am glad to see that because also I am interested in that language, but I have just German translations of epic materials (not the original ones), and no grammar manuals. You have a knowledge on its grammar and phonetics, or You can even speak it fluently? Do You have original folklore texts too?

I wish much luck both to Your job and studies and to Wikipedia.

Best wishes,

Physis (talk) 13:19, 19 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi Physis,


 * AFAIK, Haine means "God" (more or less) to animist Hadza today. AFAIK there is no other word to translate Swahili Mungu, and none at all to translate miungu 'gods'. For the few Hadza Christians, Haine is the Christian god. That's not to say that it didn't mean something else in the 1930s. Then there's Berger's stories from the 1940s, in which Haine created man, animals, and the epheme men's ceremony. (There are so many taboos around the epheme, which is based on the moon, that many women refuse even to say the word "moon".) Haine even made a mistake by forgetting knees, so that no-one could sit down, until he came down to Earth and corrected it.


 * The orthography I changed to is that of James Woodburn, which is followed in what little material there is on the Hadza language. I didn't convert names I wasn't familiar with, but placed them in quotes.


 * Kohl-Larson worked through Isanzu and Swahili, neither of which have grammatical gender, to access Hadza, so it's not surprising that gender became confused. Going by his student Berger, who faithfully transcribed the Hadza for comparison, the German translations are atrocious, as you'd expect by playing telephone with Hadza → Isanzu → Swahili → German. Hadza gender is very clear: feminine singular names (except before the vocative -ye) end in -ko, masculine ones do not.


 * I agree that Hadza religious thought does not much resemble that of Europe, so you're right to counsel caution. I will hopefully have a chance to read your full essay soon. —kwami (talk) 20:42, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Acknowledging Your version, asking time for Hadza questions, they are more complex that I thought
Dear Kwamikagami,

Thank You for Your answers, and also the many new things for me (e.g. about epeme and moon taboos). I tried to answer, but the material turned out to be abundant, the variants diverse, the whole topic complex. Many things support Your approach. Although there are questions yet, but I think the processing of the material takes yet much time from me. I acknowledge the version which You wrote in the article, exactly because there are so many things and questions in the topic, many supporting Your version, and as for the (maybe seemingly) contradicting questions that emerged, we can return to them later. Now I cannot make the choices, decisions, filtering, composing and balancing tasks, first I want to study the sources more deeply, I think that will take one or more halfyears.

I tried to collect everything in User:Physis/Diachronical description of Hadzabe beliefs all that I found till now, but I do not ask more for reverting Your changes, because many things support Your variant, and the (maybe seemingly) contradicting things need that much processing task that I cannot undertake it in the few next months.

Congratulation to Your knowledge about Hadzabe, I hope shall be able to learn something of the language and the folklore (interpretations) in the future.

Physis (talk) 12:14, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

eyelashes
In the article about eyelashes they say Hadzas trim their eyelashes. Can something about that be said here, why do they do that etc... Gnemetropos (talk) 20:52, 25 May 2010 (UTC)


 * They don't trim them, they (women) pluck them, apparently for beauty. — kwami (talk) 00:55, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

New photos
There are some new photoes of Hadza people in Wikimedia. --Молли-1 (talk) 09:37, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Phylogeny of the Hadza language
Tishkoff et al. weakly support the idea of a "Macro Khoisan" language family including Hadza on genetic grounds and summarises the linguistic evidence as "controversial". If we're contending the issue is settled (I really wouldn't know) then I think another, preferably more recent, citation is needed. joe&bull;roet&bull;c 19:31, 12 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Genetic models are only useful in conjunction with linguistic classification. They can't be used as evidence for classification any more than language can be used as evidence for genetics. So we need to look at historical linguistics, and in that field the idea of Khoisan has been almost entirely abandoned. There may be a couple holdouts, but I think we give that adequate weight given how small a minority they are. — kwami (talk) 22:36, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added tag to http://www.rogerblench.info/Language/Khoesan/Handout%20Riezlern%202008.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140916204930/https://sites.google.com/site/thehadzabushmenoftanzania/map-of-hadzaland-1 to http://sites.google.com/site/thehadzabushmenoftanzania/map-of-hadzaland-1

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coincidence in myth/fossil findings?
Multiple people have noted the similarities between what science says happened with hominids/early humans and what the Hazda myth states. The very first humans were tall, hairy, and didn't use fire. The next race were tall, lived in caves, domesticated certain animals and used medicine, but weren't as hairy. Then the modern people came who were shorter and used bows, bowls, and houses. Then the very modern people, are the ones right now. According to science and what it currently says, it would seem the first people were Australopiths or early Homo erectus. The next ones were Homo erectus/early sapien, and the moderns are of the modern black race. It does say the hairy giants would stare at their prey and watch it die, but that doesn't seem true. All the same, the parallels are uncanny.137.118.106.30 (talk) 04:00, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

Currently the article states: "It is possible that their oral history, mentioned above, recalls earlier hominins and such as Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, and Homo sapiens idaltu.[23]" That link -23 to National Geographic has nothing to say on that unscientific supposition. Elemming (talk) 01:06, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

The entire section on oral tradition is based on one article. It does not say "Multiple people have noted the similarities between what science says happened with hominids/early humans and what the Hazda myth states" although it is implied at the end that the authors believe that. Is there another article on their oral traditions and can the speculation be removed?

https://books.google.com/books?id=6xL-IywZ8IUC&q=Akakaanebe#v=snippet&q=Akakaanebe&f=false Elemming (talk) 01:23, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Misconceptions
"The general attitude of neighbouring agro-pastoralists towards the Hadza was prejudicial; they viewed them as backwards, not possessing a "real language", and made up of the dispossessed of neighbouring tribes that had fled into the forest out of poverty or because they committed a crime."

The previous section notes that there has been significant admixture between the Hadza and Bantu. So it's quite possible that there is at least a partial truth in there, namely that individuals from Bantu tribes have joined the Hadza for reasons like the stated ones – a fact that was exaggerated and distorted by the Hadza's agriculturalist neighbours. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:11, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Should we believe the UNESCO instead?
This article states:" Hadzane is an entirely oral language, but it is not predicted to be in danger of extinction." "Ethnologue" states that it is endangered and they use that term when most children do not learn the language as their first one. https://www.ethnologue.com/size-and-vitality/hts UNESCO states that this language is not endangered but vulnerable because most children learn it but the use is restricted to certain areas of life, for example to the home. http://www.unesco.org/culture/languages-atlas/en/atlasmap/language-id-114.html Because the tribe is keen of its traditions and because of the strong use of swahili in Tanzania I suppose that UNESCO is closest to the truth. Should we change the article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hasselc (talk • contribs) 21:11, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

description under picture is odd
Under one photograph in the article it says "The Hadza's way of life is highly conservative. Huts have been built in this style for as long as records have been kept." The picture shows modern materials used. So for thousands of years they have used old garbage they found around to make their homes? Does being "highly conservative" involve using any random garbage you find to make your home?  D r e a m Focus  13:46, 9 July 2021 (UTC)