Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/26

2 in South Africa, nor is it possible to determine with any degree of accuracy whether he has lived in this part of the world as long as in Europe, though the most primitive of stone implements, the one which Professor Sollas has named the boucher, is found in abundance here, and indeed all over Africa, as well as there. By the word man is meant a being capable of communicating his thoughts by speech, understanding the use of fire, and able to make implements, however crude, of wood or stone. That such a being roamed over South Africa from an exceedingly remote period is absolutely certain from the situations in which many of his implements are found, and the crust termed the patina which has formed upon them.

The ancient mounds of shells along the seacoast are usually regarded as furnishing one proof of this fact. The first of these that was examined carefully was a heap formerly to be seen in a cave at Mossel Bay, which was for some years regarded as a curiosity more than as a record of the existence there of man at some distant period. It was even held by some amateur investigators that the shells had been brought there by seabirds. More recently many other mounds have been discovered, among them one on the left