H.— ANTHROPOLOGY. 161 



it is known whether it was locally-evolved from a previous indigenous 

 culture ; or whether its origin is due to ' mutation,' as a result of culture- 

 fusion ; or, again, whether it represents an intrusive culture which had 

 been differentiated elsewhere. 



Another intriguing problem has as its focussing point the 'kwe, the 

 stone digging-stick weight of the Bushmen. Although this is one of the 

 best-known implement-types in South Africa, and one of the most widely 

 dispersed, it presents one of the greatest puzzles. Judged by the standard 

 of Europe and of most other parts of the archaeological world, the perforated 

 stone ball known as 'kwe seems to be out of place in the hands of a people 

 whose culture largely suggests palaeolithic affinities. The art of per- 

 forating implements of hard stone was, in Europe, a late development, 

 and it does not appear to have become prevalent until the later phases of 

 the Neolithic period. Hence, there is a suggestion of precociousness 

 on the part of the Bushmen, whose general status hardly warranted their 

 possessing, or, at any rate, making perforated stone tools. The question 

 as to how they came by this technique is one which is not readily answered. 

 A possible solution occurred to me many years ago, when I ascertained that 

 another people, occupying an area in North-eastern Africa, employ a 

 practically identical implement — to wit, a simple digging-stick heavily 

 loaded with a perforated stone weight, through which the stick passes. 

 These people are the Gallas, an Hamitic people domiciled to the south of 

 Abyssinia. Being in a relatively advanced state of culture, their employ- 

 ment of perforated stones is not in any way remarkable. But their use 

 of this stone-weighted digging tool does suggest the possibility that, in 

 the course of their southward drift, some of the Bushman hordes may have 

 come into contact with the Gallas, or kindred peoples, and have acquired 

 from them a knowledge of this tool, and of the technique involved, and 

 have carried with them into the South a borrowed idea which was destined 

 to become an anomalous though prominent feature in the so-called 

 ' Wilton ' industry. That they should have invented the 'kwe for them- 

 selves is contrary to analogy, and the fact that an identical appliance, used 

 in a similar manner, occurs among a people in the North, at least offers a 

 possible explanation of the seeming paradox. 



The existence in South Africa of the 'kive, with its marked neolithic 

 facies, is rendered the more striking when we remember that implements 

 of distinctively neolithic character are rarities in Africa to the south of 

 the Zambesi. Ground stone celts, for example, are of very uncommon 

 occurrence, and the same applies to the typical late Stone-age arrow- 

 heads,- locally found examples of which probably hardly exceed half a 

 dozen in number. Other characteristic neolithic types are conspicuous 

 by their absence in the region. In the local sequence of cultures the 

 typical late Stone-age appears to be missing, or at least so faintly repre- 

 sented that it cannot be regarded as ever having exercised a dominating 

 influence. At best the latest purely Stone-age culture definitely repre- 

 sented in South Africa suggests a general upper Palaeolithic and Meso- 

 lithic level modified by a very slight infiltration of neolithic intrusion, 

 and no marked invasion of a people possessed of a culture at all com- 

 parable with that of typical Neolithic Man in the north seems to have 

 occurred. 



1929 „ 



