The !Kung who are called Bushman or San live in and around the Kalahari desert. The Kalahari is one of the largest, continuous sand surfaces in the world, and unlike other deserts, the Kalahari is considered semidesert because the rainfall amounts vary from six to eighteen inches per year (Marshall, 1976, p.62). This semidesert environment shapes the lifestyle and habits of the !Kung. These people endure enormous hardship because of the bleak conditions in the desert, but the desert does provide the !Kung with sufficient food in the form of edible plants high in water content and the animals they hunt.
             The Kalahari desert receives most of its rain in the months of January through March while the rest of the year is virtually dry. Rain in the desert is not predictable, which means that some regions can receive enormous amounts of rain and other regions none. The !Kung depend on scattered waterholes for their water, and there are three types of waterholes: 1) permanent, 2) semi-permanent, depending on sever droughts, and 3) temporary waterholes which are filled only when it rains. The !Kung are nomadic primarily for environmental reasons, and they have incorporated beliefs pertaining to the environment into their social behavior which serves to bond and strengthen their ties to the land and to themselves. The !Kung are hunters and gathers, which means they have no permanent dwellings. They move seasonally from waterhole to waterhole, but upon returning to a water hole they do not use the same camps because of certain taboos regarding prosperity. They do not reuse abandoned cam!
             ps because they believe when you make new fires that it is associated with ..."fresh hope, fresh chance for good fortune. To build new fires on old sites might nullify the fresh chance and invite misfortune (Marshall, 1976, p.79)". The !Kung camp in an area that has all the needed resources such as water, plants, and animals to hunt, and they set up this new ...