Robin Barkes

Most people are familiar with what we know today as “bushman stones”. These flat round stones have a hole drilled through the centre and it is commonly thought that ancient bushmen made them to add weight to their digging sticks.

Personally I don’t believe this. The little hunter/gatherers certainly used the stones on their digging sticks, as did some of the black tribes, but although European hunter/explorers actually saw and recorded this, no one ever witnessed stones like these being made. As a matter of fact, the bushmen themselves said they found the stones already drilled and some time way back in the hazy history of mankind their forebears started using them to weight their digging sticks. Cave paintings show tribeswomen holding implements like these, but also depict men carrying them as clubs. So who made these perforated stones in the first place?

Scientists, anthropologists and archaeologists who have tried to discover the riddle of the stones can only put forward theories. You see, stones of this type are not exclusive to South Africa, but have also been found on the Gulf Coast of Mexico, in the Guatemalan highlands and on some Pacific islands. The stones found in these areas are called “doughnut stones” and the wise men who study them suggest different uses. Some feel they were used as skull-crushing mace-heads, while others say they might have been used during Pre-Columbian ball games. Other investigators feel the ancient users believed the stones had mystical or medicinal powers, while others figure the stones were used simply as weights.

I guess any of these theories could be right – but would they apply here in Africa? Somehow I just cannot believe that the ancient bushmen would spend hours, days, weeks, perhaps months making a hole through a rock just to dig up an edible root. Also, remember the hunter/gatherers were always on the move and the less weight they carried, the easier it was for them, so I can’t imagine them lugging stones around. Besides, perforated stones weighing from 500 grams to over three kilograms have been discovered, so it is obvious they had many uses.

The correct name for the African-made stones is kwi or kwis. The scientists who discovered them in the Congo and Angola say this was the original native term and although the stones were, in modern times, also used on digging sticks and as mace-heads, some felt they were once used as currency and carried on a stick. But, again, no one ever saw a kwi being made – so who made them originally, and how?
The wandering Bushmen, or San as they are called today, have lived in South Africa for a long time. Their earliest cave paintings have been dated as being 27 000 years old. Before that, the earliest “man”, called Pithecanthropus, existed about 100 000 years ago and was capable of making flaked tools and hand axes. But this fellow did not drill holes through stones because they have never been found amongst his handiwork.

However, a later group called Neanderthals, who existed only about 30 000 years ago may have. A branch of these robust beings, called Rhodesian man, lived in southern Africa where the first skull was found in 1921. Scientists today believe the Neanderthal-type chappie was far more advanced than previously thought and it is still a mystery today why they died out. Some believe that there were simply too few of them and they were either wiped out in clashes with other branches of hominids or absorbed by them.

Unfortunately, history hidden beneath the earth does not easily reveal itself and as one scientist said, “There are more people studying fossil hominid bones than there are actual bones.” And it is only from these ancient bones that they are able to date the stone tools found with them at different levels during their digs.

So far, no kwis have ever been found way beneath the fossil-bearing earth or in the bottom layer of a dug-out dark cave. So who made them? Well, I can tell you right now that I know who made at least one of these mysterious stones. Nope, it wasn’t some hairy, heavy-jawed ancestor but a very nice fellow named Deon. You see, my friend Deon is just as interested in prehistory as I am and as an experiment he found a flat round river stone and drilled a hole through it. Working on and off in his spare time the exercise has so far taken more than ten hours of labour, using the very best modern tools – and it’s not complete yet!

Just think about it: how on earth did a stone-age man with primitive tools drill a neat round hole through a hard rock? In his book, The Prehistory of Africa, there is an illustration of what the author, Professor H Aliman, labels as “a drill for perforating kwis”, made during the late Stone Age in Southern Africa. I have included a drawing of the flaked stone drill and it is left up to the reader to imagine how long it took to make a hole through a stone. Heck, I think I’d rather take up ice fishing.

Some authorities believe the ancients kept chipping and pecking away on both sides until they were through, then smoothed the hole by rotating a stick in it. But why? Surely those guys had more important things to do – like hunt for food. Every day of their lives must have been taken up with survival, so why waste valuable time drilling a hole through a stone?

In my opinion the stones must have been very important to them, and because survival was the first and foremost thought in their lives I think the perforated stones played a big part in this. Throughout history man has relied on his weapons for survival and those who had superior weapons lived better – and longer. Therefore it is my personal belief that the mysterious stones were originally weapons. Just think, not only could a stone be used as a bone-crushing club, a larger one could be used to weight a heavy spear for dropping out of a tree to impale a passing hippo or elephant. A smaller stone could be used on a tapered whippy stick to hurl into a flock of flying ducks, or guinea fowl just as we, as kids, shot balls of mud at each other.

Perhaps some stones were attached to a leather thong and whirled around, then let loose to fly off at a distant target in the same manner as a bolas. Much later, perhaps thousands of years later, the bow and arrow came along and so made the stone-age “super-weapon” obsolete – just like our weapons of war are continually being outdated by superior ones.

But certainly, the stones continued to be used as digging sticks, rollers, crushers and so on. As a matter of fact, the perforated stone may have been the Leatherman of prehistoric times – the world’s first multipurpose tool.

Alas, the riddle of the stones still lies somewhere beneath the shifting, whispering sands and we will probably never know the answer to who made them … or exactly why.