Book Review

In 1950 E. M. van Zinderen Bakker (Phil. Nat. D. Amsterdam), director Palynological Research Unit of the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and of the University of the Orange Free State, Bloemfontein, started a series of papers under the title “Palynology of Africa”. The first four reports were published in Swedish periodicals, while numbers 5-8 have been independently published. The first issues were rather modest; they covered only the initial research on palynology in South Africa. In the subsequent numbers data on biogeography, archaeology, geology and pedology were gradually added as these disciplines are strongly related to palynology. The area covered by the reports was extended, moreover, to the whole of Africa, the surrounding islands, and Antarctica. In this way the reports became so important that it was necessary to reprint them. These reprinted editions form together vol. I of the series reviewed here. The term “palynology” in the title was changed into “Palaeoecology” which more adequately reflects the contents. Vol. II, covering the years 1964 and 1965, appeared in 1967. The number of pages indicates the expansion of the activities in palaeoecological research in Africa. This volume contains numerous contributions written by the editor’s colleagues from other countries engaged in or superpising palaeoecological research in Africa. The volume contains chapters on climatology and Salaeoclimatology, archaeology, biogeography, palynology in Africa, Antarctica and the vouthern Ocean, isotopic dates, morphology of microfossils; a list of names and addresses of workers in the fields covered by the chapters mentioned, a subject index and an authors index. Vol. Ill, also published in 1967, has a totally different scope. It is entirely devoted to the investigations by Miss Coetzee on pollen analysis in East and South Africa. It discusses the migrations of plants, animals and man against the background of the Quaternary climatic changes in Africa. It contains, besides an editorial preface by E. M. v. Z. B., a foreword and an introduction by the author, two parts, viz. I The East African Mountains, and II Southern Africa. It is illustrated by a colour plate, some photographic plates of vegetation types, photomicrographs of fossil pollen and 24 diagrams and maps, the latter partly included in the text and partly inserted in a pocket attached to the back cover. The author rejects the Pleistocene Pluvial hypothesis on which the Quaternary stratigraphy of Africa was based. She shows that arid and pluvial climates prevailed synchronously in Africa during the Glacial periods of the Northern Hemisphere.