Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/50



one of the ancient palaeolithic cave dwellers of Europe could make his appearance there again in flesh and blood, what an interest would be taken in him! He would be regarded as being able to throw a flood of light upon the early existence of man on the earth, and from all sides students and members of scientific societies would gather round him to learn all that he could teach. In point of fact he could tell them nothing, even if they could understand his speech. He could not explain the dim religious thoughts, or rather apprehensions of fear from something vague outside himself, that passed through his brain, nor give reliable information of any kind upon the past of his race, where they came from or when or how they had their origin. Of such subjects he knew nothing, and accepted the fact of his own existence and that of his associates without bothering himself about any inquiry into the matter. His conversation would be limited to narratives of the game he had killed, or the girl he had won by sending an arrow through a rival's heart as he lay sleeping, or how his brother had been bewitched by an enemy and had died, or how somebody had been turned into a wild animal and was still spell-bound and only to be seen in his proper form by those whose eyes had been cleansed by charms.

Only in the evening when he was surfeited with the flesh of some animal he had slain, and when weary of the dance he reclined by the fire and admired the patterns made with ochre and soot and grease on his otherwise naked body, he would tell some story of insects or birds or beasts that he had heard from Rh