 The Western Ridge of the Melville Koppies has a cave, visible from Beyers Naude Drive, the road that runs between this Ridge and the central section. Says Mason: "We have found six pieces of broken bow and arrow points, of the kind used in Botswana until recently, in the cave, and a grooved stone which would have been used for shaping the arrow." Mason estimates the findings to be around 1 000 years old. These would have been Bushmen artefacts.
These Bushmen and Khoikhoi predate Bantu peoples in South Africa. The Bushmen or San were hunter-gatherers and were Stone Age people, only using metal for their arrow tips after they made contact with Bantu people. They were nomadic people, carrying their simple shelters along with them. Where available, they made use of caves for shelter, and left behind their most valuable artefact, rock paintings, giving extensive knowledge of their culture and history. They did not make pottery, instead they used ostrich eggshells for storing water.
Their distinctive physical features - shortness, high cheek bones, peppercorn hair, lighter complexion - together with their unique click languages, are different from Bantu peoples and testify to their development in isolation in South Africa for thousands of years, possibly going back 30 000 years.
About 2 000 years ago a breakaway Bushman group, who became known as the Khoikhoi, acquired cattle, possibly from neighbours to the north. The Khoikhoi moved further south into the Cape, in search of grazing, and where in 1652 they met and were finally exterminated by European settlers.
Once the Europeans expanded into South Africa, the Bushmen were squeezed from both sides: the foreigners from the Cape and the Bantu peoples from the south and east. They were forced into the far northern desert areas of South Africa and Botswana, where small groups still exist, in a partially Westernised, marginalised state.
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