Early Man in South Africa

620 NATURE APRIL 20, 1935

with large Stellenbosch-like implements in dolerite ; Early Man in South Africa but the use of dolerite is almost at once abandoned I WOULD be glad to be allowed to point out that (except for the production of large horse-hoof shaped Dr. Leakey's results in Kenya are very closely cleavers-which are found through all the phases of similar to those found by me on the south coast of the culture) and the lydianite flakes pass through Africa-the quartzite area-except in the matter of Mousterian-like, Aurignacian-like and Magdalenian• time. like phases, all the phases continuing to be associated Leakey's Kanjera skulls are, as stated by Sir with extinct species of mammals. The curious point Arthur Keith, definitely negroid; in fact to judge about this evolution of the lydianite culture is that merely by his fragments, very closely similar indeed all its phases, especially the earlier ones, remind one to the man responsible for the Early Mossel Bay (and Mr. Van Hiet Lowe agrees with me here) of industry-of whom I now have three adult (one Leakey's Early Kenyan Aurignacian. 1 described by Keith ) and one juvenile skulls, that The early history of South Africa is not therefore describe:l by Keith, with its boat-shaped frontal as Leakey describes it for Kenya (with a Mousterian• region, being very aberrant in this respect. This Early Aurignacian technique following on a Chellean• :Wassel Bay (without a doubt much earlier than the Acheulean); not as it has been expressed in the Still Bay and its associated .Fish Hock skull) is found accepted classification of South African stone imple• in natural strata in the Grey Zone at the base of the ments; not as it used to be described for Europe• Superficial Black layer 2 (also recently found much but as Breuil now accepts it for Europe, namely, more numerously in the same zone at Plettenberg with a contemporaneous evolution of the Chellean• Day by me), and this Black layer, representing present Acheulean and a Clacton-Mousterian technique. The climatic conditions, must be taken to be Holocene. only difference is that, in Europe, one can see no This prehistoric South African (or Kanjera man), reason for this difference, whereas in South Africa the however, was not only Holocene. In 1934-35 I difference in the available material would to some found sufficient fragments of a Late Stellenbosch extent explain it. skull in a shelter at Plettenberg Bay to convince It is not only in the stratification of natural de• anyone seeing them that they represent the very posits, and in the mammalian fossils of these, that same type of man. These Late Stellenboseh imple• the extreme age of the lydianite Clacton-Mousterian, ments are extremely common in the Red Sand below as compared with the Late Stellenbosch, is to be the Black layer (see also ref. 2), that is, in a deposit seen; but also in the nature of the human remains. representing an arid period before the Holocene. The latter is associated with Kanjera man (better If we now assume that the Middle Stellenbosch, at prehistoric South Africans), the former with the least, is due to the same human race, we at last huge, very primitive ancestral form of H. sapiens•, come to the prehistoric South African more or less which, it may be said in passing, has no points of contemporaneous with Leakey's Kanjera man. Here resemblance, except in size, with the extremely then we have perfect harmony between South and dubious H,hodesian man. East Africa, except that Leakey, dealing with T . .F. DREYER. massive deposits from large volumes of water, may Grey University College, perhaps be overestimating the age of these deposits. Bloemfontein. If we now proceed to the lydianite area of the Feb. 25. Free State, we find other resemblances-again ex• 1 Roy. Soc. S. Africa, 21, Pt. ii. cepting in the matter of time. A beautifully preserved 2 Dreyer, Roy. Soc. S. Africa, 22, Pt. iii. series of deposits of a streamlet, each carrying imple• 3 "]<'loris Bad Man", Dreyer and Aricns Kappers, Kon. Akad. Amsterdam, 1935. ments, is to be seen at Bayswater, Bloemfontein. At a single spot, the following succession is preserved, the whole being more than twenty feet in thickness :- Distribution of Nuclear Mechanical Moments ( l) Gravelly blue clay, blue clay, unconformity, representing a period of erosion (drought) during AT present, the nuclear mechanical spins of about which the recently laid down strata were eroded fifty atoms, including about sixty isotopes, are known. away. Of these, the spins of fifty-three odd atomic weight (2) Hed boulder gravel, red grit, red clay, cal• isotopes are known with a fair degree of certainty, some careous clay (only preserved towards the downstream doubt existing only in very few cases. Two types of end), black clay (only a small piece preserved at the odd atomic weight atoms exist, namely, those with extreme downstream end of the exposure), uncon• odd atomic number (A) and those with even atomic formity. number (B). The former possess an odd nuclear (3) H,ed boulder gravel, red grit, red clay, uncon• proton, the latter an odd nuclear neutron. Amongst formity (at this spot the expected calcareous clay and the fifty-three fairly reliable spins, thirty-nine belong black clay were completely eroded away). to the former class and fourteen to the latter. The (4) Heddish sand with its top heavily impregnated distributions of the nuclear mechanical moments in with lime-unconformity. the two classes are shown in Fig. l. (5) Black layer. At this exposure the Layer 3 The difference in the distributions is very striking. forms a little hillock so that the Layer 5 has been No significance is probably to be attached to the mostly eroded away. missing spin atoms in the lower curve, for as yet To my mind, this series can only mean one thing• only a little more than half of all the atoms of the that the strata represent the remains of five climatic Periodic Table have been studied. In spite of this, cycles-the same number represented by the sand the above distributions appear to have real signi• and peat layers twenty-four miles away at Floris Bad; ficance. Thus although class B atoms are only one• and from Layer l to Layer 4 the lydianite culture third as numerous as class A, yet there are more was evolving in the same way as is to be seen at the spins of t in class B than in class A, and this can .Floris Bad and other sites. It, like the quartzite scarcely be accidental in view of the general trends Stellenbosch, commences as a Clacton-like phase, of both the curves.