Similarities Between Early And Early Mixed Farming

There are more differences than similarities between the lifestyles of the early and late mixed farming communities of precolonial Southern Africa.
The main economic activity of the Early Mixed farmers was crop cultivation where as the main economic activity of the Late Mixed Farmers was the possession of cattle, they used the cattle’s hides for clothing, drums and shields and milk was part of their staple diet. They used cattle in order to trade with other people for luxury items, food or iron tools.
The early mixed farmers traded only with the Khoesan and they only traded iron supplements and crops, whereas the Late Mixed farmers had an extensive trading network, they traded with people from East Africa, Arabia, Persia, India and China,
Iron was only mined so that they could trade it. Copper and Gold was also minded for trading purposes.
In the Early Mixed Farming communities’ women played an important role of Social relation because women were the crop cultivators and they interacted with other communities. In Late Mixed Farming Communities men played the role of Social relations because since trading was a vital role of their economy the men did all the trading and none of the trading was done by the women.
In Early Mixed Farming communities, no households in the villages were richer or larger because they shared the crops. In Late Mixed Farming communities since cattle ownership was the main economic practice people didn’t share their cattle and therefore people who were richer had bigger households and more money than other people of that village. In the Late Mixed farming communities, trading played an important role in determining a person’s wealth and power within the village, whereas the cultivators traded only to get things that they
In the Late Mixed Farming communities, the creation of chieftainships which are larger groups that are linked to the accumulation of wealth through controlling trade routes and the ownership of livestock. States formed which are a number of chiefdoms emerged, these states were ruled by kings and they had may chiefs serving under him, in the early Mixed farming communities there were no state formations.
In the Early Mixed Farming communities, they had a surplus of food so that if a drought came the were prepared were as the Late Mixed Farming communities had no surpluses of food.
There were three social practises that the Late Mixed Farming communities had that the Early mixed Farming communities did not have, they were; Lobolo, Mafisa cattle and Initiation.
Lobolo was when you had to pay to marry a women, it was usually cattle that was used to pay with, cattle owners were able to pay for a number of