HITTITES IN AFRICA. 399 



left by accident on the foot or hanging- wall, as the case may be, 

 and unprofitable rock taken out instead. 



I have heard it claimed that skill in mining is inborn, and can- 

 not be acquired. Without going so far as this, I nevertheless 

 think that the skill indicated by the ancient workings could not 

 have been acquired by any people in a few years, or even in a 

 generation, and I feel certain that if this mining is the work of a 

 people of the same race as the existing native population of South 

 Africa, that preceding the extensive mining operations that were 

 evidently at one time carried on, theie must have been a con- 

 siderable period of development on the part of at least a section 

 of the population, and that altogether there must have been a long 

 period of persistent effort, which could not have failed to have 

 had a profound effect on the character of these people, on their 

 habits, their condition and on their capabilities ; an effect which 

 would not readily have passed away and would not have been 

 effaced in a few generations. So far as we have any historical 

 evidence, however, judging from what Portuguese and Arab 

 writers have told us, at no time during the last thousand years 

 do the natives of South-East Africa seem to have been essentially 

 different from what they are to-day. I think it far more probable 

 that the ancient mining in Rhodesia was the work of foreign in- 

 truders, who brought their experience with them from some other 

 land, and who also brought with them a capacity for organisation 

 and for persistent effort, which we do not generally find among 

 the natives to-day, and which I do not think we should have 

 found among their ancestors of a few hundred years ago. 



Turning now to a consideration of the ruins of buildings in 

 Rhodesia, we have before us as alternatives, on the one hand, 

 the supposition that these buildings were the work of natives of 

 the country and represent the outcome of a culture locally 

 developed ; or, on the other hand, that they were the work of 

 foreigners, who brought with them to South Africa a certain 

 culture and civilization from their original home. If the first 

 supposition were correct, we should expect to find on the sites, of 

 at least some of the ruins, evidences of previous occupation, and 

 some indications of the origin and growth of the culture they 

 represent ; for it seems to me inconceivable, that natives who 

 may, or may not, have been in the habit of building round huts 

 of rough unhewn stone, should suddenly begin to erect walls of 

 massive masonry, built of pressed stone, laid in regular courses, 

 constructed on a complicated plan and showing evidence of astro- 

 nomical observations. What appear, however, to be the oldest 

 buildings would seem to be the best, and so far as I can learn, no 

 evidence of any period of development preceding the building of 

 these has hitherto been found. I find it difficult to believe that 

 these mines and buildings were the work of the ancestors of the 

 present native population in mediaeval times, not so much per- 

 haps because achievements such as these would be beyond the 

 limits of their capabilities, as because they lie outside the line of 

 their natural aptitudes and inclinations. As an analogous case, I 

 have seen quoted that of the artistic development of negroid 

 peoples in West Africa, under the stimulus of contact with the 



