The Roots of Black South Africa by David Hammond-Tooke (Used)

A revolution took place in southern Africa in the early centuries of the first millennium AD. Suddenly, in the warm lowveld and bushveld of what is now 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 newcomers — 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.

We know that, over many hundreds of years, the culture underwent transformations that enabled them to overcome the hardships and dangers of their often harsh land, until a delicate equilibrium was wrought, reflecting adaptations to the environment that had roots deep into the past. The coming of the white man destroyed this era forever. Alienation of land went hand in hand with loss of political independence. But changes were not only political. They were economic, religious and social, all interlinked and reinforcing one another.

Condition: Good, with faded spine on dust jacket