Abstract
DR. ROBERT BROOM'S recant discoveries in the Transvaal of important evidence bearing upon the origin and descent of man have tended to overshadow another field of anthropological investigation in South Africa which, though more localized in its application, ranks in African ethnology as scarcely of lesser significance for studies of the evolution and distribution of prehistoric racial types. The problem in question arises from the recognition by Dr. A. Galloway* in the skeletal material from the remarkable prehistoric sites of Mapungubwe and Bambadyanalo, recently excavated, of a new race, the Bush-Boskopoid, associated with and apparently responsible for the mining operations which figure conspicuously among the activities of the prehistoric inhabitants of Rhodesia. The physical characters of the race of miners, their relation to the Bantu-speaking peoples who later came to form the predominant population, and how far the Bush-Boskopoid of Mapungubwe constitutes the type, are discussed in a series of communications made recently to the Rhodesia Scientific Association (Transactions,37; 1939).
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Prehistoric Peoples in South Africa. Nature 145, 394–395 (1940). https://doi.org/10.1038/145394a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/145394a0