The Stone Ages of SoutJi Africa. 173 



This rite has been observed in many parts of the world, and three 

 causes ai'e assigned to it : symbohc attitude (the dead returning to 

 the bosom of mother earth) ; greater facihty for burying the body in 

 a restricted space, especially when a rough crypt had to be made ; 

 and lastly, when ligaments were used — -which is not the case in 

 South African sepultures — due to a sense of terror, inspired by the 

 dead, in the survivors. 



But one reason which has not, to my knowledge, been adduced to 

 explain this position may be found in that assumed naturally by the 

 Hottentot-Bush aborigines of the present day w^hen sleeping, and 

 especially when ill, and that posture is identical with that of the 

 skeletons. This fact had not escaped the notice of Sparrman. 

 Endeavouring (1775) to induce a young Hottentot to enter his 

 service, he crawled into his hut, and "found him lying under his 

 skin-cloak in the manner of his countrymen which I have already 

 mentioned, the knees drawn to his nose, as a feet us in the mother's 

 ivomb " 



It should not necessarily be inferred from the above remarks that 

 this method of sepulture originated with the Hottentot races. Yet 

 it was in common use among the neolithic people of Egypt with 

 whom the Hottentots or " Sans " have undoubtedly come in contact, 

 if they are not of them. It is also observed among some pre- 

 historic European races,''' even when the small stone coffins, or " stone 

 cists," themselves much smaller than the body and making therefore 

 a reduction of length compulsory, had come into vogue. 



But whereas the connection of the Hottentot and prehistoric 

 Egyptian is probable, the proposition that the same existed with 

 the Neolithic races that inhabited Central or Southern Europe might 

 seem hazardous, except that the discovery in the " Grimaldi Caves " 

 near Mentone, of a small race with negroid characters, associated with 

 australoid, throws a new light on the possible dispersion of a race 

 which inhabited at all events the shores of the Mediterranean, and 

 possibly also Central Europe — a race that preceded the Cro-Magnon, 

 and that w^as in turn posterior to the Neanderthal, which, in all likeli- 

 hood, is the middle pleistocene race of man that occupied part of 

 Europe. 



It is interesting to compare with the sepultures of the southern 

 littoral of the Cape the discoveries of the " Grimaldi" cave, with 

 reference to this negroid type of which two skeletons of small size 

 have been found in the lower stratum. One is that of an old 



* In Bohemia the Neolithic race that inhabited that country is designed as " people 

 of the tucked skeletons " (Pic Starozinotsti Zeme beske, i., apud Dechelette). 



