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East [?] 16.1.47
PREHISTORY CONGRESS : 
EARLY MAN IN AFRICA
Union Expert's Lecture
The background of events in the Southern part of the African Continent during the period of man's development were described by Dr. H. B. S. Cooke of the University of Johannesburg in the course of his address at the Pan-African Congress on Prehistory at Nairobi yesterday.
Dr. Cooke remarked that the beds in South Africa which belonged to this period were scanty and very thin by comparison with the great deposits of East Africa. The fauna, too, was not nearly so well known, nor as rich as that of Kenya and Tanganyika, but it was a singularly interesting one, since ancient caves had yielded remains of the now famous ape-men of Taungs, Sterkfontein and Kromdraai.
While the evidence for dating these proto-human skulls was not conclusive. Dr. Cooke continued, it seeemed probable that the Sterkfontein and Kromdraai men lived in the lower Pleistocene times, and were survivors from the stock from which man had sprung. 
The Taungs skull was a great deal older and probably lived during the later Pliocene, perhaps 2,000,000 years ago.
Dr. Cooke stated that humans made tools in South Africa at much the same time as they did in East Africa, in Europe and elsewhere, and that the occupation of the southern end of the Continent stretched back almost to the beginning of the Pleistocene. 
Climate Changes
Changes of climate had occurred in South Africa during the past million years, but they were relatively slight, and did not have the same marked effects on the migrations of animals of which there was evidence in Europe durind Ice Ages.
(Continued on page 4.)

Revision: Congrès de Nairobi 56 (#56)

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