190 Annals of the South African Museum. 



But, in addition, this Bush-Hottentot language has influenced 

 that of the Bantu-speaking negroes of South Africa," and this fact 

 implies a very long intercourse of the two races, unless they were 

 at one time the same. 



Of a still longer duration must have been this intercourse with 

 the Berg Damara, a Kaffir, degraded no doubt, yet retaining still the 

 physical characteristics of his race. His language, however, is no 

 longer Bantu, but Nama, i.e., Hottentot. 



According to Meinhof and Von Luschan the clicks have come 

 from the Bushmen to the Hottentots, and passed on through the 

 latter to the Kaffirs. 



Yet clicks are also used by several tribes living now to the north 

 of the territories where the Bantu language prevails, namely, in 

 German East Africa among the Wascendaui ; in British x\frica 

 among the Watwas. The Angonis, a Zulu tribs of East Africa, are 

 said to have brought clicks from South Africa. 



The presence of these typical clicks in the language of the people 

 aforesaid leads Meinhof to assume with what he calls " some 

 justification" that those South African languages (Bushman as 

 well as Hottentot) had possible relations in olden times to the 

 north of the region of the Bantu idioms. 



Beyond, however, showing intercourse between races differing 

 in several characters, philology does not help in proving or dis- 

 proving, as the case may be, the antiquity of the language of the 

 San, and thereby of the race. 



We have in South Africa the so-called Bushman with, it is 

 alleged, seven or more clicks ; the Nama, or Hottentot, with four ; 

 the Kaffir with two. 



If complexity in a language were a proof of antiquity certainly 

 the Bushman might be safely considered to be an older race than 

 the Sudanese, and also the Hottentot. But is not this very com- 

 plexity due to isolation? What we know of the Bush dialects would 

 seem to bear out this assumption. 



Having to subsist mostly on the produce of the chase, or eke out 

 a precarious living from the veld, unable therefore to live in lai'ge 

 communities, his language would, of necessity, become a com- 

 plicated dialect. It is not too much to assume that through this 

 very isolation some of the clicks of one clan were lost, others 



* There are only two clicks in Kaffir, four in Hottentot, and seven or more in 

 Bushman. Kaffir employs clicks only before a vowel ; Nama also before n, k, 

 and X. Bushman before all consonants, and even before all other clicks" 

 (Von Luschan, " The Racial Affinities of the Hottentots," Eep. S. Afr. Ass, Adv. 

 So. 1905, vol. iii.). 



