THEAFRICANS
culture is constrained not only by the irregular rainfall but also by the
quality of the soils, which, as in tropical Africa, are generally "poor both in
mineral and organic nutrients and in structure."! Yethuman diseases were
less widespread in temperate Southern Africa than in the tropics further
north.
Southern Africa possesses great mineral resources. Iron-bearing rocks
were spread throughout much of the region, and rocks containing gold and
copper broke surface at various points in the Limpopo river valley and the
northwestern part of the Cape Province, as well as further north in
Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Zambia. Preindustrial farming people mined
these deposits in open stopes to a depth of several feet and extracted the
minerals from the deposits; but modern industrial technology was a pre-
requisite for the fuller exploitation of the region's vast quantities of gold,
copper, diamonds, platinum, chrome, and uranium. Gold-mining opera-
tions now penetrate two miles below the surface. It was also left to modern
technology to remedy the lack of navigable waterways by constructing
railroads, roads for automobiles, and, eventually, air transportation
ser-
vices, to enrich the soils with modern fertilizers, and to mitigate the effects