Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/32

8 slight degree when compared with a modern European, for his ailments were few and were in general attributed to witchcraft. War, whether against his fellows or the powerful carnivora, would be a more important factor in obliging him to exercise his mind, and to it was probably due the gradual though tardy improvement in his weapons by the selection of harder stone and by fashioning them more carefully. But slow indeed was the progress in cultivation from the hunter who used the stone weapons of early times to the Bushman who shot his bone-tipped arrow at an antelope at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Where the race of savages who occupied this country so long, the race now termed the Bushmen, had its origin can only be conjectured, and the highest authorities are not agreed as to the locality. That it once spread over the whole of Africa, a portion at least of Southern Europe, and South-Eastern Asia appears to be absolutely certain, but where did it have its birth and its early childhood? That is the doubtful question.

Dr. Peringuey believes in Africa, and he gives reasons for his conclusion that members of it migrated to Europe at a time so remote that there was a passage by dry land over the centre of what is now the Mediterranean sea. He does not allude to the section of the race in South-Eastern Asia, but confines himself to Europe and Africa.

Professor Sollas, on the contrary, holds that the migration was from Europe to Africa, and assigns it to the same remote period as Dr. Peringuey. He gives a graphic description