Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/44

20 Egypt and the Berbers in North-West Africa having a much larger mixture of alien blood in their veins.

After this, how long there are no means of ascertaining, negroes came into the continent, in all probability by way of the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, and spread out south of the desert and along the Atlantic coast. Wherever they went the Bushmen disappeared, the girls being absorbed, and all the others being destroyed.

Then other races invaded the continent, Arabs, various tribes of more distant Asiatics, among whom were the progenitors of the modern Bantu, some of whom settled in the north-east, and others pushed their way southward. All were deadly foes of the Bushmen, sparing only the young females, and so it came to pass that by the year 1500 of our era there were none of the ancient inhabitants left north of the Zambesi, except the few wretched little bands that had managed to take refuge in places so difficult of access that they could exist there almost undisturbed.

A question now arises whether there were any people whatever in Africa before the Bushmen. If there were, they must have been of even a lower type, or they would not have been displaced. Recent discoveries have made it certain that there were earlier races in Europe than the Aurignacian, and so it is possible that there may have been in South Africa. From the primeval home of man, wherever it was, successive waves may have been thrown off, and the Bushman wave was not necessarily the first. It may have been to a preceding one what succeeding ones were to it, that is it may have entirely destroyed or absorbed the other.

The evidence in favour of the existence of such a race may be stated. First and strongest is the abundance of primitive bouchers that have been found, implements cruder than those used by Aurignacians and probably by Bushmen of the same age.

Next there are frequent references by Bushmen in their folklore tales and legends to an older race, but this cannot be accepted as conclusive evidence, because no tradition can