Anthropological Investigations of the Bushmen of South Africa

Abstract

Since the turn of the century, the anthropological sciences have turned their attention to the aborigines of South Africa from their remotest past to the present time. The discovery of a fossilized skull at Boskop in Transvaal by H. S. Haughton in 1917 gave the impetus to more intensive investigation. Eight years later, the skull and natural cast of a young individual, described and classified by Professor Raymond A. Dart of Johannesburg as genus Australopithecus, was found at Taungs, Bechuanaland.' In 1936 and during the ensuing years, other adult remains were found at Sterkfontein and Kromdraai in the vicinity of Krugersdorp. Dr. Robert Broom grouped the remains found in these places into two separate genera, respectively Plesianthropus and Paranthropus. New excavations in 1948 at Swartkranz about a mile from the Sterkfontein caves divulged additional valuable material. Thus, Dr. Broom felt justified in saying in his last treatise published shortly before his death: . . As South Africa has discovered a whole family of higher Apeor Man-like beings with brains in some quite up to the human range ... and from some member of which man as we know him almost certainly arose, I think she can claim that she has solved much of the problem of Man's origin. Even if we do not know how the evolution took place, we know what happened. 2 It is not sur-