Note 13 — Chapter I · PREHISTORIC RACE MOVEMENTS IN AFRICA

Some evidence, chiefly traditional, is adduced to show that Madagascar was once inhabited by a yellow-skinned dwarfish race of Bushman stock known as the “Kimo.” But it is still more difficult to imagine a Bushman race possessing canoes sufficiently large and seaworthy for the crossing of the Moçambique channel; or to ascribe to the prehistoric Arabs, who may have traded with south-east Africa, the motiveless transportation of Bushmen to south-west Madagascar. The supposed negro aborigines, apart from the dwarfish Kimo, are known traditionally by the Malagasy as “Ba-zimba” or “Va-zimba,” and their burial places are pointed out. The Ba-zimba may have been the mysterious race which built Zimbabwe.