Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 April 1880 — Extinct Races. [ARTICLE]

Extinct Races.

At a recent meeting of the London Anthropological Institute Dr. Emil Holub delivered an address on the Central South African tribes from the South Coast to the Zambesi. Dr. Holnj) had found along the South Coast traces of tribes, which do not now exist, heaps of burnt bones df wild animals, noue of domestic animals, and brokon shells. Other tribes once belonged to the regions between the Limpopo and the Zambesi, and here were found ruins of towns, generally in the vicinity of mines, especially gold mines. The houses were of stone, on the top of mountains, put together without any oement, bat 90 well fitted that they have stood for hundreds of years. Some of the ruins were formed of blocks of granite in the shape of brides. The tops of small hills were fortohed in this way, with openings in the walls. The remain# probably belong to those who inhabited the anoient Empire ot Monopotapa, mentioned by tne Dutch and Portugnese traders as existing two hundred years ago. When a country is conquered it is the custom to kill all the male population, take the women and children prisoners, aud educate the latter as warriors of the victorious tribe; in this way whole tribes have ceased to exist in South Africa. Even since Livingstone’s time a powerful tribe of the Basutos, on the Upper Zambesi, named the Makololos, has been almost exterminated. Dr. Holub divided the living tribes into three races—the Bushmen, the Hottentots, and the Bantus; he found a link between the Bushmen and the Bantu family, and between the Bushmen and the negroes, but not between the Hottentots and the Bantus. The Bushmen are rapidlv dying out, and are utterly incapable of* civilization. They use stone weapons and poisoned arrows, but thff bows and arrows are of very simple construction oorapared with those in nse among the natives of North and South America. The Hottentot race is divided into three tribes—the real Hottentots, the Griqnas And the Koran as. No Sooth African tribe has taken so eagerly to the vices of civilization as the Hottentot race. The Bechuanas observe many of the virtues of the white man, but the Hottentot adopts only his vices. Drunkenness is the chief cause of their dying out. They do not seem to have any religion, but a kind of freemasonry exists among them, the onCward and visible sign of which is three outs on the chest made with appropriate ceremony.