The !Kung people of the plains call the Tsodilo Hills the "Bracelets of the Morning," with the exclamation point in !Kung indicating a tongue click at the beginning of the word. For 2,000 years people have lived around these granite outcroppings rising from the dry Kalahari plain, and some more ancient, now vanished people are known only from their paintings. The modern HaMbukushu have a creation myth in which their god, Nyambi, let the first people down from heaven on a rope onto the Tsodilo Hills. Animals living in the hills have different adaptations from those on the nearby plains: small mammals such as hyraxes and mongooses thrive in the rocky habitat's many hiding places, while predators such as the leopard hunt them by stealth and ambush. The hills' granite outcroppings form part of the highlands west of the valley through which the Okavango River flows, and ancient petroglyphs are all that remain of long vanished people.
