4.3 Early settlements in south africa

(a) Conduct a group discussion based on the following questions:

• Have you ever come across something important or valuable while walking in the veld - something that no one else has discovered?
• Was Mzonjani found by lucky chance or by accident?

The Boomplaas cave

People inhabited the Boomplaas cave in the Kango, near Oudtshoorn in the Southern Cape over a long period of time. When archaeologists excavated a cross section of this cave, each layer of soil that they examined told a story about a different period in the history of the cave and the people who had inhabited it.

b) Study the diagram about the Boomplaas cave that follows and answer the following questions:

1. Identify the weapons that were used during the following periods:

1. 40000 B.C. – 30 000 B.C.
2. 4450 B.C – 50 A.D.

2. What are the activities that the people undertook?

3. Which kind of people lived there at about 250 A.D. and what did they do?

4. What can we discover from earthenware and domesticated animals?

Broederstroom

Broederstroom is one of the best-known early agricultural villages situated south of the Limpopo River. It is situated against the southern slopes of the Magalies River valley, in what used to be the south-western Transvaal. The people who lived here about 350 to 600 A.D. were hunters who also kept cattle, as it was a bushy environment with sufficient water and pastures approximately two days’ distance on foot.

After 600 A.D. the village was abandoned, to be discovered again through scrupulous investigation by archaeologists linked to the University of the Witwatersrand. Floors and foundations of the buildings of long ago are all that have remained.

The remains, however, indicate that the houses were mostly round and had floors of hardened plastered clay. The roofs were probably made of reeds supported by wooden beams. The excavation also revealed decorated clay pots of varying shapes and sizes and copper objects, and it was possible to learn that iron was smelted and processed at the site.

c) Study the following map and indicate whether the statements that follow represent facts or opinions:

Map of the terrain

Assessment

Memorandum

Activity 1

(1) d (3) f (5) g (7) b

(2) f (4) a (6) c

Activity 2

(a) Yes

(b) (1) Sinkers (fishing), arrows and hand axes (stone, wood), arrowheads

of bone

(Middle Stone Age) Materials became more advanced (Late Stone Age)

1. Manufacture tools, food, jewelry, hunt, practising art, build houses
2. Khoina – partly also black farmers, keep sheep, earthenware
3. The Khoina introduced the first tamed animals (eg. fat-tailed sheep) and the first earthenware to South Africa.

(c) f, f, f