542 



NATURE 



[February 23, 191 1 



■I'llE ETHNOGRAPHY OF SOUTH AFRICA.' 



MR. McCALL THEAL, the celebrated historian of 

 South Africa, introduced into his volumes on 

 I hat subject, published first of all some fifteen or more 

 years ago, a variety of chapters and paragraphs on 

 I he traditional history, the habits and customs of the 

 South African natives — Bushmen, Hottentots, and 

 Bantu negroes. He considered that this work, owing 

 to its being scattered through a number of volumes 

 was not sufficiently useful or accessible to students 

 of South Africa, and therefore has now selected much 

 of his ethnographical material from the aforesaid 

 history, and has republished it in a separate book, 

 the volume under review. To these chapters origin- 

 ally written, we may suppose, about twenty years ago 

 — or even more — he has added a good deal of recent 

 research work, and it may be said at once that 

 although in some respects this book is not quite 

 up-to-date and fails to appreciate some of the newest 

 theories and most recently dis- 

 covered facts, it is likely to be 

 essential to all students of 

 Africa for a long time to come. 

 It is eminently readable; and 

 although there are a few mis- 

 takes, such as perhaps no such 

 work could be exempt from, 

 the slight defects of the book 

 are rather in the nature of 

 omission than of commission. 



Perhaps Mr. McCall Theal's 

 greatest mistake is in connec- 

 tion with the Bushmen and 

 their relationships. He is apt 

 to assume, first, that the 

 Bushmen were the only human 

 race in the Old World, Hving 

 in a condition of absolute 

 savagery, which at the same 

 time was gifted with a remark- 

 able power of design and an 

 irresistible inclination to make 

 pictures, and to engrave, punc- 

 ture, scratch, or paint those 

 pictures on rock surfaces. He 

 is therefore inclined to ascribe to 

 Bushmen the marvellously good 

 prehistoric drawings, paint- 

 ing, and engravings which 

 have been discovered during 

 the last fifty years in the caves 

 of France and Spain. But, in 

 the first place, it must be 

 pointed out that the men of the 

 Palaeolithic and Neolithic ages 

 who did those drawings have been claimed by other 

 ethnologists as of Eskimo race, simple because the 

 Eskimo, like the Bushman, had the same pictorial 

 gift. Similarly, again, they might be represented as 

 Amerindians or Australoids. It is best to suspend 

 judgment on this subject until we have a far more 

 complete array of evidence. It seems probable 

 (Iiat man very early in his history as Homo sapiens 

 developed the art of drawing. This art, indeed, is 

 firesent almost without exception in all savage or un- 

 civilised races at the present day, though in some it 

 lemains dormant until a chance circumstance draws 

 it out. 



Mr. McCall Theal is also in error when he con- 

 tinues (in spite of all that has been written and pub- 



' "The Yellow and Dark-skinned People of Africa, South of the 

 Zambezi." A Description of the Bushmen, the Hottentots, and particularly 

 the Bantu, and numerous Folklore Tales of these different Peonle. By fir. 

 G. McCall Theal. Pp. xyi+397 + is plates. (London : Swan Sonnensch; in 

 and Co., Ltd., 1910.) Price 10s. td. 



lished on this subject during the past ten years) to 

 identify the Bushmen with the Congo pigmies, and 

 with other stunted negro races of equatorial or tropical 

 Africa. Dr. F. C. Shrubsall, in reviewing the collec- 

 tions of the present writer, Dr. Arthur Keith, Prof. 

 Duckworth, Dr. Elliot Smith, to say nothing of 

 various German and French anthropologists, have 

 during the past ten years conclusively shown that 

 there was no connection (other than that they were 

 both members of the negro subspecies) between the 

 Bushmen and the Congo pigmies. The last-named 

 are nothing but stunted Forest negroes, whom the 

 peculiar conditions of life in the dense forests have 

 dwarfed. Removed from these unfavourable condi- 

 tions, the Congo pigmy in the second or third genera- 

 tion grows to a more ordinary stature. Neither in 

 language nor in physique do the Congo pigmies stand 

 apart from the other black negroes. 



But the Bushman is a most distinct type of the 

 negro subspecies, due to a divergent development 



NO. 2156, VOL. 85] 



Fig. I. — Engraving of a Zebra on a Rock in the District of Vryburg. The original is 13 inches in lengtl>» 

 From " The Yellow and Dark-skinned People of Africa, South ot the Zambezi." 



which may be conceivably fifty to a hundred thousand 

 years old. The Hottentot, of course, is nothing but ;i 

 cross between the black negro and the Bushman. 



Mr. Theal descants on the usually hideous aspect, 

 the ultra-negro character of the Bantu Damara (he 

 might have added also, of the Berg-Damara or Hauk- 

 woin), but this is likewise a superficial pronounce- 

 ment. Among the other Herero, and even amongst 

 the Berg-Damara, there are types (some of which 

 the present writer has illustrated through the kind- 

 ness of the Royal Geographical Society) which might 

 be selected as those of the ideal Bantu, faces almost 

 Hamitic in profile, and even in the abundance and 

 length of head hair. Yet the same tribal designations 

 will cover creatures that might be mistaken for Congo 

 pigmies or the most debased and animal-looking type 

 of Forest negro. 



Likewise, amongst the Kafirs and Zulus, the aris- 

 tocratic types are constantly being given as illustra- 



