Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/29

Rh metres higher than it is at present; in localities where considerable changes in the contour of the surface must have taken place since they were deposited; and at great depths in aeolian rock, where bones of animals and shells are also found.

How long the boucher continued to be used cannot be ascertained, but at length better implements were formed. Possibly the first inhabitants had evolved by themselves something superior, or another section of people, having made an advance in knowledge somewhere else, migrated slowly to South Africa, and established new industries here. From this time forward the implements were formed, not of oval water-worn stones, but of pieces broken off a rock and then chipped into the required shapes. It might be a spearhead that was needed, or a scraper, or a chopper, or something to serve as a knife, all these could now be made. The arrowhead can hardly date back as far, for it implies a knowledge of the bow, an implement which must have been the product of much thought. But if the advance is due to immigration, not to native growth of knowledge, the bow may have been brought here by the newcomers, and the stone arrowheads found in great abundance be as ancient in South Africa as the knife or the unhafted axe.