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Next Prehistory Congress In South Africa
(The East African Standard, 17-5-1947
INVITATION FROM GENERAL SMUTS
AN INVITATION from General Smuts, Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, to hold the next meeting in the Union in 1951 was yesterday accepted "with deep gratitude" by delegates at the Pan-African Congress on Prehistory, which is in session at Nairobi. The South African Government's invitation was conveyed through Colonel R. Campbell-Ross, Commissioner for the Union in Nairobi.
Professor C. van Riet Lowe, Director of Archaelogical Survey in the Union, and Professor of Archaelogy at the University of Witwatersrand, told an East African Standard reporter that the invitation emphasised the importance attached to research in the Union and augured well for the furture of prehistoric study in Africa. South Africa, he pointed out, had sent the largest delegation to the present Congress, and it was very gratifying that the session had accepted the invitation with such enthusiasm. 
Professor van Riet Lowe's paper on "The Development of the Great Hand-Axe Culture in South Africa" formed one of the most important contributions  to yesterday's discussions. 
Professor van Riet Lowe said the belief was expressed that Africa was the original home of tool-making man; that the Great Hand-axe Culture developed in Africa only after the Continent had been occupied by man for a very lengthy period and that it spread northwards as far as the British Isles, eastwards as far as India and Ceylon and southwards as far as the Cape of Good Hope during early Pleistocene times. 
Evidence was adduced to show not only how deep were man's roots in Africa, but how remarkably alike were the stone implements he left in his tracks after he had penetrated to continental extremes in Africa, Europe and Asia during Pleistocene period. The affinities between hand-axes recovered from ancient terraces of the Thames and Somme in the north, from similar tarraces in the Limpopo and Vaal in the south, and from eqaully deep-buried deposits in India, clearly indicated a most important diffusion of culture during remote prehistoric times - incidentally revealing Africa as the greatest and most important stage on which the drama of early human evolution was enacted. 
"While it is now generally accepted that the essential home of the Great Hand-axe Culture is to be sought in Africa, we find, when we set out in search of the roots of this culture, that as soon as we leave this Continent we flounder in mists of uncertainty," the speaker continued : "If, on the other hand, we remain here, we find that here - and here only - we have a long series of earlier, welle-stratified cultures which lead us naturally and directly to the establishment of the Great Hand-axe Culture. When we add to these the remarkable dicoveries of Dart

Revision: Congrès de Nairobi 58 (#58)

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