Karoo were very large and the family group moved from one part to the other. Their only domestic animals were dogs. The Bantu people to the east of the Great Karoo did not occupy this arid region due to the scarce rainfall which prevented the farming of cattle. In 1854, Daniel Halladay invented the multibladed windpump (windmill) in the USA. It was perfected in 1883, and soon South Africa (and elsewhere) produced them in large numbers. These windpumps transformed the Great Karoo, making permanent settlement and stock farming (predominantly sheep) possible over large parts of the Karoo for the first time.
Ryn Desert can drop to a low of . Many small towns are scattered throughout the Ryn Desert, and population density is between 1 and 15 people per square mile. The Ryn lies in a semi-arid climate zone, and receives very little rainfall. High winds sweep across the desert, and in 2001 a dust storm in the Baltic Sea was determined as originating in the Ryn Desert. A study of long-range dust transportation to the Baltic Sea region—by analyzing dust pollution in Scandinavia, showed that aerosol concentrations there were influenced more by the Ryn Desert region than the Sahara Desert in Africa.