SOUTH AFRICAN ASSOCIATION. 15 



yet seen, and so closely akin to the Neanderthal stock as to establish 

 firmly the expectation of finding further compelling evidence of a long 

 continued Neanderthaloid occupation of the African continent. The 

 discovery at Taungs on the one hand, which reaches out towards the 

 unknown past, and the finds at Boskop and in the Tsitsikama on the 

 other, which assist in linking up the period of Rhodesian man with the 

 coming of the Bushfolk, open up to us, in conjunction with the afore- 

 mentioned facts, a vista of anthropological continuity in Africa such as 

 no other continent can offer. The recent investigations in the Great 

 Rift Valley, near Elementeita in Kenya, and the fossil discoveries on the 

 Springbok Flats, north of Pretoria, have again fixed the attention of the 

 anthropologist on Africa. 



Nor are the data presently available restricted to these discoveries. 

 The efforts of archaeologists, and the application of improved scientific 

 methods in excavation, are giving us stratigraphical evidence of the 

 succession of stone cultures which is of the utmost importance. I have 

 already mentioned the assistance which Geology can render in this work, 

 but there is needed also the co-operation of those who labour in the 

 converging fields of Anatomy, Archaeology, Palaeontology, and Compara- 

 tive Zoology. That co-operation has already commenced. In the 

 investigation of the Vaal River gravels it has yielded important 

 results, and we may look forward to its continuance and expansion in 

 the years that lie ahead. Of the importance of African Anthropology 

 for the understanding of that of Europe there can be no question. "Work 

 of importance has already been done in the study of the relations between 

 Palaeolithic Art in Europe and Palaeolithic Art in Africa. The significance 

 of these comparisons is but emblematic of the importance of similar 

 investigations in regard to stone cultures, rock engravings, ancient mining, 

 stone circles and ancient ruins, methods of primitive mining and agri- 

 culture, tribal organisation, laws and customs, indeed the whole range of 

 the hitherto unexplained or partially explained phenomena of living and 

 extinct cultures. There is no lack of avenues which the student of 

 African Anthropology may follow in the hope of finding at the end of 

 them results of supreme value for Science in general. 



I would speak next of the vast field, as yet almost uncharted, of 

 phonological and philological study. Here in Africa we have great 

 opportunities for the examination of linguistic problems, and some of 

 them have bearings which extend far beyond the limits of Africa. One 

 thinks first of the opportunities which Africa offers for investigating the 



