162 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



When the great succession of invasions of Bantu peoples was inaugu- 

 rated, the newcomers were, presumably, already well advanced in their 

 Iron-age, and had long since passed out of even the latest phases of the 

 Stone-age. Hence, as far as South Africa is concerned, the transition 

 from Stone to Iron was remarkably abrupt. There is a marked hiatus 

 due to the absence of linking cultures between a late Palaeolithic phase, 

 somewhat modified by intrusive ideas, and an already evolved phase of 

 Metal. The fact that the later arrivals upon the scene^ — with their superior 

 physique and their knowledge of working iron — were vastly superior to 

 the peoples whom they overran and succeeded in dominating, must have 

 created a sudden and far-reaching change in the general economic develop- 

 ment of the region. The imbridged culture hiatus is a wide one, and is 

 one of the strilang features in South African history. 



The earlier nomad hunters appear to have been gradually forced into 

 their final southern home, and to have remained for a long time in a state 

 of partial stagnation, undergoing comparatively little progressive evolu- 

 tion. To a considerable degree the industries which were successively 

 introduced by them offer analogy to some of the early Stone-age industries 

 which have been differentiated and standardised in Europe, and which 

 furnish the obvious basis of comparison in prehistoric archaeology. In 

 all probability the early cultures of South Africa may, for the most part, 

 be regarded as related to and as offshoots from those whose sequence- 

 status has been determined in the north. But one cannot expect the 

 resemblance between the European and the South African series to be 

 very exact, since it is highly improbable that their occurrence in the two 

 widely separated regions synchronised. A migrating culture, even the 

 most unprogressive, cannot long continue unchanged. It is plastic and 

 reacts to new environmental conditions, which create special wants and 

 impose modifications. New elements appear in response to new demands, 

 and some of the old characteristics vanish as their utility ceases. On the 

 periphery of its dispersal an industry is, in fact, liable to show marked 

 differentiation from its original prototype. Certain elements in the 

 complex persist, and continue to supply evidence of affinity with distant 

 cultures ; but the points of divergence are no less interesting, since they 

 illustrate the effect of the new environment upon the habits of the people. 

 South African archaeology intriguingly suggests culture-afl&nities, far- 

 ranging both in time and in space, and illustrates at the same time how 

 those affinities have become more or less obscured and attenuated in the 

 course of long migration. 



At present the South African problems have to be studied to a great 

 extent as a group of isolated phenomena, because a vast area to the north 

 remains, archseologically, almost unexplored. Northern Rhodesia, Nyassa- 

 land and Tanganyika Territory, when the story of their ancient cultures 

 has been fully revealed, should throw a flood of light upon South African 

 archaeological peculiarities, by furnishing evidence of the migration-routes 

 and of the gradual changes in culture detail resulting from the dispersal 

 southward. Further north, in Uganda and Kenya Colony, important and I 

 suggestive work has already been carried out by Mr. E. J. Wayland and 

 Mr. L. S. B. Leakey, the results of which have an important bearing upon] 

 the South African problems. But the full import and significance of 



