168 Annals of the South African Museum. 



shelters show or not remains or traces of mural decorations in the 

 shape of paintings, small implements only are met with. Fig. 133 

 represents eleven scraper-knives from Matoppos, Southern Ehodesia, 

 where parietal paintings occur ; Fig. 134 of eleven scraper-knives 

 from Modderpoort, Orange Free State, where paintings are also 

 found ; Fig. 135 implements from a rock-shelter which, like the one I 

 have dealt with, is also from Smithfield, O.F.S., and without any 

 painting ; and Fig. 136 similar pieces from the neighbourhood of a 

 large cave full of frescoes in the Prieska District, Cape Colony. 



Fig. 137 in PI. XVIII. is very instructive. It represents a gun and 

 a spade — terribly symbolic of the fate of the race — cut or fashioned 

 of wood, and discovered in a small rock-shelter in the District of 

 Victoria West, Cape Colony, with traces of fire, &c. Together 

 were found the three small knife- scraper tools used for the fabrica- 

 tion of these wooden representations (Nos. 3, 4 and 5). That they 

 are of very recent age is obvious ; but we have no evidence of these 

 pygmy tools having been hafted or held in a handle by gum-cement. 

 Yet had they in this instance been so treated traces of that mode of 

 attachment would have certainly survived the comparatively few 

 years that have elapsed since they were manufactured. 



The conclusion is that the man who used these shelters trusted 

 to and relied on his bow and poisoned arrow^s ; the rest is of no great 

 consequence to him. Any stone will do to cut his quarry ; has 

 he not his firesticks with him ? are pots so difticult to make, roots 

 so difficult to grind ? But his arrow has to be tipped with 

 flakes with a sharp edge — stones of a kind, however, which are 

 not found everywhere ; hence, the small agate nuclei he carries 

 with him, the small grinder with which to prepare the poisoned 

 paste he uses for his arrows. He may have known the bouchers, 

 and perhaps the men that used them. What matters to him ? he has 

 now the dreaded weapon before which every other aboriginal flees. 

 Boucher-maker probably he never was, and had he been it, what 

 would he do now with these ponderous weapon ? Is not the small 

 chip of agate sufficient to bring his quarry down ? Is not any stone 

 he may pick sufficient to break the marrow bones without fashion- 

 ing it at great trouble into an amygdaloidal shape and carrying 

 it wherever he roams ! 



Is this man the most primitive of mankind ? Are his stone 

 implements, then, the true eoliths, the precursors of the Chellean- 

 Mousterian bouchers or other tools of those periods ? 



No, plainly not. He is an example of regression as far as 

 the lithic culture or industry is concerned, but this regression in 



