The St07ie Ages of South Africa. 187 



■" Dr. Greathead happened to come across two ancient Bamangwato 

 ■settlements (Bechuanaland). On the site of these two settlements 

 we found innumerable bits of pottery of the same type as the pottery 

 made to this day/'' large numbers of stone implements, especially 

 scraper-knives, and I happened to find a small stone bead which is 

 of the same type as the digging stones of the Bushmen, with double 

 bell-shaped perforations. Khama (the chief) told me expi'essly that 

 his people used to make such beads, otherwise I would have ascribed 

 it to Bushmen." 



Contact with Bush people, especially that come to by the Baka- 

 lahadi — serfs of the Bechuanas, although belonging to the same race 

 — could account for the presence of the stone scrapers or knives and 

 the perforation of the stone bead. 



It is thus quite possible that the pottery-makers of Khami or 

 Dhlo-Dhlo did also acquire, and in certain localities retained from 

 their contact with the small yellow man, the traditional use of stone 

 ■chips for incising on the pottery they made by hand their essentially 

 own geometrical figures. Moreover, it cannot be claimed for these 

 •decorated sherds that they are old. 



On Eandall-Maciver's own showing neither the "huts " and their 

 floors, nor, for that matter, the Rhodesian ruins, are more than 

 mediaeval. Any ethnologist who takes the trouble to compare the 

 iron relics found there with those obtaining wholly or still partly 

 ■among the Bechuanas, cannot but be struck with the identity in 

 shape and purpose. When I pointed out this similarity at the time 

 •of Bent's discoveries I was laughed to scorn. Things have changed 

 since. 



That this influence of contact is not imaginary is corroborated by 

 the fact that the few surviving Bush people -f- found among the great 

 •agglomeration of Kaffirs in the eastern part of the Cape Province 

 are soothsayers and rain doctors. The Bantu-speaking natives 

 implicitly believe in and propitiate them when occasion arises. 



Europeans and other civilised races, with their traditions of 

 ■^'pixies," goblins, gnomes, djins, &c., should not gird too freely 

 at the superstitious Kaffir. 



The folk-lore of the Kaffir is not very rich, and poor indeed is that 

 •of the Hottentot and of the Damara. But among the published tables 

 that I have so far come across there is one only in which mention is 



* Painted pottery is very seldom produced now, but incised designs of the usual 

 launching, herring-bone, and chevron patterns still subsist. Unfortunately Dr. 

 .Schonland does not specify either the style or the decoration. 



t I believe that the last male member of that lace died last year (1909). 



