written descriptions; but not until the nineteenth century do we have the
first substantial descriptions of societies in the interior of South Africa.
Those accounts, moreover, have their limitations. Alien observers are im-
perfect recorders and interpreters, and we cannot be sure how ancient or
how recent were the things that they described. Finally, it was not until the
twentieth century that many Africans themselves began to write about
their past. The reader should bear these problems in mind throughout this
chapter.
2