CHAPTER XI. ORNAMENTS. The records of the Cape Settlement, and the narratives of the early travellers testify to the fondness of Hottentots for ornaments, especially those made of copper. Sparrman mentions and figures the ornaments that some Hottentots wear: strings of marine shells, which from the illustration appear to be Nerita albicilla, L., and also a circular, diadem-like head-dress of leather adorned with three spaced rows of “ cowries," but no allusion has, as far as I know, been made to that peculiar object of ornament, the ostrich egg-shell discoidal bead. Had it been in use among the Hottentots, the travellers would in all likelihood have mentioned the occurrence of a decoration so unlike any other; the absence of these beads would thus seem to strengthen the belief that the Hottentots, whom Sparrman, among others, met, were, comparatively, new-comers in South Africa. These disks are the ornament of these members of the Khoikhoin race, the Strand Looper, and possibly the Bushman, but seemingly not of their congener the Hottentot.* Few rockshelters, few open-air middens can be said to be without them. They are found in all stages of manufacture. The smaller kinds are met with along the coastal belt only. We have them round the loins of an exhumed Strand Looper skeleton at Blaauwberg, or on the ankles of the skeleton of a child from Coldstream, but we have them also of small size, and adhering still to human remains, from the Orange River Colony. Those found up-country are usually more than twice the size of the coast-belt ones; the hole is not so broad in proportion, and owing to their larger diameter the periphery is more regular. At But worn round the waist, in the case of women, they may well have escaped the attention of early travellers repelled moreover by the absolute body filth of the aborigines, a filth to which all testify. the present moment they are still manufactured by the Ba-sarwa, or Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, for adorning not only themselves but also the dusky Damara or Ovampo belles, and among the miserable tools of these most degraded, or, perhaps, most primitive people are found the rude, well-nigh shapeless, chalcedony borers, that are represented in Pl. XX., Fig. 147. But apart from these flat, perforated egg-shell disks, we find ornaments which have a character connecting them with the ! kwès, owing to their mode of perforation, the importance of which is greater than would at first appear. Thus the bead, Cut 3 of Fig. 186 (Pl. XXV.). It was found together with the club Fig. 152 (Pl. XIX.). The boring is the same as that of the ! kwès, that is to say, it was begun at each pole. The same obtains for Cut 2 of the same Fig. It was discovered, with two more, I am told, in a grave near Vryburg. Both these examples are unique. But Cut 1 or Fig. 186, instead of being made of stone, is an earthenware bead, which, however, assumes a shape not very dissimilar from that of No. 2; it does not present the same kind of perforation, because it is made of clay built over a reed, which disappeared, of course, if left in position, in the baking process, or, and this is a simpler explanation, the clay when fashioned to the requisite shape, was perforated from end to end before baking. This mode of perforation beginning at each pole, or extremity, to meet in the centre, is repeated even in that of the ostrich egg-shell disks, which are of themselves so thin. It has been followed in the nacreous shell-beads with two parallel holes, Fig. 187, Pl. XXV.; in the bead or pendants, Figs. 206 and 207, Pl. XXVII.; and if it has not been resorted to in shells forming a (?) necklace, Fig. 206 of Pl. XXVII., it is because of the impossibility of completing the boring from the inner part. These holes are, in consequence, very roughly punched. As ornaments also we shall have to consider the flat disks 1 and We have in the Collection a waist-band, 28 cm. in diameter, consisting of 27 ropes of these strung egg-shell beads, twelve of which go to the inch. A. A. Anderson ("Twenty-five Years in a Waggon," 1887, i., p. 280), estimates to 8,000 the number of these beads required to make one set of ornaments worn by a young bush-girl. From the Record We have now two such ornaments. The second is shorter than the one figured. Three were found, while digging or ploughing a field and a garden respectively, in the Stellenbosch District, Cape Colony. Book of the Museum I find that a 66 clay-bead" was found together with Cut 3 of Fig. 186, but it seems to have been lost or mislaid. 2 of Fig. 156, and in spite of their thinness, they have likewise been bored from both sides for suspension. Boring a hole in a stone is not one of the most easy of undertakings, and when the stone is of a diameter exceeding 11 cm., as in many of the ! kwès the difficulty is enhanced when the bore is started at each end. In South Africa, however, one cannot but be struck by the primitiveness displayed by the makers, a primitiveness that seems to denote: 1. That they were unacquainted with the bow-drill. 2. That the method was adopted on account of the great thickness of the ! kwès. 3. That they were not inventive enough to devise a simpler method, such as punching, for thin flat surfaces. The beads figured are diminutive tikoes. The ostrich egg-shell disks are not. For the manufacture of both, however, diminutive drills have been made. In the perforated stones of Chile, the same system of perforation was in use, and it is, or was, followed in New Guinea. If we continue our comparison with the ornaments of the Mousterian, Solutrian, and Magdalenian periods of Europe, we find there Bone and ivory pendants, beads, perforated shells for making necklaces or tiaras; stringed vertebræ of fish; perforated teeth of various animals intended for neck or waist wear, some of the teeth, mostly canines, bearing graved striæ, figures of barbed harpoons, fish, seals, &c. In South Africa all the ornaments differ, with perhaps the exception of the perforated sea-shells of some o the Outeniqua Caves. The stone beads, with an unique type of perforation, are different; unheard of in the European epochs mentioned are the earthenware beads; the steatite and other stone pendants, Fig. 207, have a shape of their own, and so have the shell ornaments, with double longitudinal holes, Fig. 187; the olive-kernel-like beads with prospectively one or two holes, Fig. 206; the large flat stone-disks, Cuts 1-2, of Fig. 156, to say nothing of the egg-shell discoidal beads bored in the centre. We have no ivory or bone pendants, no suspended teeth of wild animals, as if the hunter disdained to wear such commonplace objects. Could it be that the neolithic South African race was so primitive that man himself did not appreciate ornaments? CHAPTER XII. THE ! KWE, OR PERFORATED STONE. Better known probably than any other stone implement is the perforated stone, either quite globular or partly so, flat or subquadrate, but with the angles always rounded, which is designated here Bushman-Stone. This implement, according to Stow, was termed 'T'koe, or Tikoe, and was used to give weight and impetus to the "Kibi" or diggingstick; it was also occasionally used as an offensive weapon or club. Miss Dora Bleek informs me, however, that the word is "Kwe," and that it is not used by itself, but in connection with the diggingstick, thus: Kwè Ka !! Kha!! Ka = the stick with the digging stone; the signs! and !! representing each a special click peculiar to the language of the "Sans." Dr. D. R. Kannemeyer corroborates this appellation, which he obtained from an old Bushman long ago, only there seems to be a transposition. Phonetically spelled it reads Ka Ka Kōwè.t The characteristic of these stone implements is the manner in which the median hole is bored. The process of perforation is invariably begun on each side, or pole, the holes thus resulting being conical; they meet in the centre, and the bore is on that account never quite straight. The unfinished specimens (No. 1, of Fig. 161, Pl. XXI.), shows very clearly the process. But by making the initial perforations too large in proportion to the size of the already naturally rounded stone, it often broke in two before completion. This is a kind of fracture which is especially noticeable, and of common occurrence with the unfinished implement. A glance at Pls. XX. and XXI. and the adjoined measurements of the pieces will give a good idea of these implements and their relative size. But unlike The Native Races of South Africa. The e is long and at the same time very open, hence my use of the grave, instead of the acute accent, as prescribed by the Royal Geographical Society. the bouchers or the muller-brayers, they are found singly. I never heard of them having been discovered either together, or in a number that suggested their gradual accumulation in mountain or hill talus, or in an alluvial deposit. Not only do they differ in this respect from bouchers, but this very difference also implies a much more recent origin. They are not uncommon in, or close to, the middens, but there they are often broken; are met on the veldt, without apparent cause or reason; are occasionally ploughed out; and I make bold to assert that there is not one district of the Cape Colony where they have not been found. They are equally numerous in the Orange Free State; but seem to be scarcer in the Transvaal, and in Natal. None has to my knowledge been found in Rhodesia, probably because they have been overlooked; they occur in the Tanganyka Plateau (Pl. XXI., Fig. 158), and Professor von Lushan of the Berlin Ethnological Museum, informs me that he has several from Kilimandjaro. They have lately been found a few miles south of Khartum, and also in North Kordofan. I am informed, although I have not been able to verify my information, that they have been met with in Somaliland. Similar implements, perforated in the same manner, are known in Europe, and in South America, Figs. 159 and 160 of Pl. XXI., represent an example from the Atacama Desert in Chile. I am not aware that they are found in Australia, and their absence there coincides singularly enough with that of the bouchers of the Chellean-Mousterian type. But there is no corollary with the bouchers in point of antiquity. The European examples are unmistakably neolithic, and not only so, but, unlike the "pygmies," it is not possible to claim for them an early neolithic age; they have been found in sepultures associated with polished, as well as dressed, stone-axes. The general acceptance of the use to which these perforated stones were put is that they were intended to give weight to the digging-stick, and there can be no doubt that even after the arrival of the Colonists they still served that purpose. This is proved by the heart-rending account of Sparrman, travelling at the time (1775) in what is now the Uniondale district of Cape Colony : "We saw, moreover, as we rode along (especially in Lange Kloof), numbers of fugitive Hottentots of both sexes, who were not longer pursued, partly on account of their age and infirmities, and partly because it was not worth any Colonist's while to lay hold on them, as they would be liable to be demanded back by their former |