ABSTRACT
Bushmen constituted the Ur-race of Africa and were incapable of learning a European language. The fear of the Bushmen has indeed produced an effect in the disforesting of South Africa; since the colonists in order to guard against stealthy attacks, removed the bush near their dwellings. Between Galton's pseudoscientific visit and the next one by a scientist, the botanist Hans Schinz in 1884, a revolution had occurred in southern African anthropological studies and the ways in which scientists conceptualized Bushmen. The ideological impact of his theories linking Bushmen and Khoi to the "ancient Coptic tongue of Egypt" was immediate and long-lasting, although they underwent continuous tinkering to keep abreast of metropolitan theoretical fashions. Schinz's division of Bushmen matches the current distribution of Bushmen surprisingly well. He estimated the Kalahari Bushmen at 5,000, of whom 3,000 to 3,500 were of "unmixed blood". Distinguishing racially pure from "bastard" Bushmen was to be a major concern of the next generation of Bushman researchers.
