The Roots of Black South Africa

A revolution took place in southern Africa in the early centuries of the first millennium AD. Suddenly in the warm Lowveld and bushveld of the Transvaal, there emerged settled communities, tilling the land, working metal, and creating a distinctive type of pottery. Before this time the country south of the Limpopo had been inhabited only by nomadic hunter-gatherers who used Late Stone Age tools. Slowly these new-comers - the ancestors of today's black South Africans - spread, with their herds of cattle, onto the savannah of the highveld and down into the coastal plains of the east. Over many hundreds of years their culture underwent transformations that enabled them to overcome the hardships and dangers of their often harsh land...

The Roots of Black Africa is a celebration of a way of life that may still have something to tell its inheritors.

By David Hammond-Tooke. Jonathan Ball Publishers, 1993. Hard cover with dust cover; A4 size; 224 pages. Immaculate condition. Under 1kg.