calibrated long before the Pyramids were even imagined. In other words,
there was a culture in place—what Thomas describes as “a web of
socially transmitted behaviours”—and all participating parties had been
habituated to their particular roles.^9 For the Bushmen, one of these was a
birdlike caution: they always watched their back; they didn’t wander
around at night, the desert predator’s preferred time of operation; and
they kept a fire going throughout the night. Constant vigilance—that is,
awareness of the possibility of becoming prey—was a way of life. In this
way, the Bushmen treated the desert much as we treat a dangerous road:
metaphorically (and metaphysically) speaking, they knew when it was
safe to cross. “The lions around here don’t harm people,” a senior hunter
named ≠Toma explained to Thomas.^10 “Where lions aren’t hunted, they
aren’t dangerous. As for us, we live in peace with them.”
If one were to substitute “tigers” for “lions,” these words could have
been spoken by Dersu Uzala, Ivan Dunkai, or, for that matter, Dmitri
Pikunov and any resident of Sobolonye.
The Bushmen’s détente with the Kalahari lions, as ancient as it may
have been, was still tenuous in the moment, and close encounters would
often crackle with a primal electricity. “Beyond our fire were their
shining eyes,” wrote Thomas on one occasion, “which were so high above
the ground that we thought at first we were seeing donkeys.”^11 The !Kung
word for lion—n!i—was used as carefully as a god’s and was seldom
uttered in the daytime (why summon the beast when it is safely asleep?).
Some individuals appeared to have supernatural relationships with these
animals, and it was generally believed that werelions stalked the desert
floor: some could leap enormous distances or cause an eclipse by
covering the sun with a paw. The Bushmen, like the indigenous peoples
of Primorye, lived among their gods. During an encounter with a lion, a
Bushman would refer to it respectfully as “Big Lion,” or “Old Lion,” just
as the Udeghe (and Manchus) referred to the tiger as “Old Man,” or “Old
Tiger.” In Chinese, “old tiger” translates to laohu ( ) which is still the
Chinese name for tiger.
That these beliefs and relationships are ancient and time-tested is