text: Most noteworthy among the relics of Africa's early periods are the rock-paintings (petrographs) and rock-engravings (petroglyphs) which have been discovered in many parts of the continent (Fig. 2). Scattered over the Saharan north, from the Atlas Mountains of Morocco to the djebels and wadis of Nubia and Kordofan, in the rocky regions of southern Africa, from the Cape to the Zambesi River, evidence of this prehistoric art has been reported. In recent years a few locations with rock-paintings have been discovered in the East African territory of Tanganyika. The absence of the rockpaintings and engravings in the forest regions of central and western Africa is striking.  
  The petrographs and petroglyphs of Africa belong to no specific period. While there can be little doubt that many of the paintings and engravings go back to times which suggest an age corresponding to that of the European Stone Age, it is equally certain that others are only a few hundred years old. This is not surprising if we realize  
  ![img-0.jpeg](img_ref_1)  
  Fig. 2. Rock-painting from Southern Rhodesia. (after Frobenius, L.: Erythräa)
  that such people as the Bushmen, who are doubtless responsible for a great deal of this art in southern Africa, continue to preserve through millennia a culture which has many of the characteristics of Stone Age days.