when the country was partly occupied by pastoral Hamitic tribes, but before the arrival of Arabs. The outlines of the figures were cut very deep into the rock.[1]
In Southern Algeria many engravings of animals on rocks have recently been discovered by Mr. G. B. Flamand, of the geological survey department, among others some of an extinct buffalo, whose bones are found in that region. These and some others must be of very great age. Mr. F. Foureau found similar engravings on the faces of masses of granite in the Sahara, all of a style and degree of art exactly corresponding to those in South Africa, and all made by punching holes or lines with sharp pieces of hard stone.[2]
From what has been stated it seems certain that at some very remote period not only the whole of Africa, but at least parts of Europe and Asia were inhabited by a race of savages identical with the Bushmen, though differing in colour and some other features in different localities. There must have been some particular locality from which they all spread out, but, as has already been stated, that locality cannot be ascertained with certainty. Dr. Peringuey believes it was in Africa, Professor Sollas thinks it was in Europe, and Monsieur A. de Quatrefages, the eminent French savant,[3] holds that it was in Asia. This seems to me the most
- ↑ See Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa: being a Journal of an Expedition undertaken under the Auspices of His Britannic Majesty's Government in the years 1849 to 1855, by Henry Barth, Ph.D., D.C.L. Five demi octave volumes, published in London in 1857 and 1858. The account of the discovery is given in chapter ix, volume i, and the pictures are on pages 197, 200, and 201.
- ↑ See the paper on Rock Engravings of Animals and the Human Figure, the Work of South African Aborigines, and their relation to similar ones found in Northern Africa, by Dr. L. Peringuey, in the Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society for 1906.
- ↑ See The Pygmies, by A. de Quatrefages, late Professor of Anthropology at the Museum of Natural History, Paris. I have only the English translation, an illustrated crown octavo volume of two hundred and sixty-five pages, published in London and New York in 1895. It contains seventy-five pages on the African pygmies.
