The earliest inhabitants of Namibia were the Khoisan, a distinct group which genetic studies suggest may have split off from the earliest common ancestors in East Africa before any others. Their languages belong to the group with distinctive clicking consonants, centred upon the Kalahari and used by the Bushmen and Hottentots, and much of modern Namibia, collectively known as the Nama people. Damaras also speak a click language. There was no written language.
The Bantu later spread southwards to most of southern Africa and westwards to Namibia some 500 years ago, but the majority of the Namibian population (currently around two million) now speak several Bantu-derived languages such as Ovambo and Herero.
Meanwhile, waves of European explorers, starting in the 15th century with the Portuguese and Dutch, landed on the coast but showed little interest because the interior was so barren. The eighteenth century was marked by various conflicts between Namas and Hereros, as well as incursions of Europeans adventurers from the Cape. By the nineteenth century these included missionaries who became based in what is now Windhoek. This settlement began trading with the coast at Walvis Bay and paved the way for the establishment of the German colony of South West Africa in 1884.
Following defeat of the local people in a war of resistance from 1904-07 there was a steady influx of German settlers who acquired the territory's most productive lands. At the start of World War I Britain encouraged the South Africans to wrest the country from the Germans, who surrendered in 1915. At the end of the war the territory was administered as a League of Nations Trust Territory by SA, who continued to exploit the land with the help of the German settlers.
After World War II, South Africa attempted to annex Namibia, an act declared illegal by the UN, but it was not until 1989 that Namibia obtained full independence. Successive elections have returned the original party of the resistance - SWAPO - to power.