Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2009
The African continent with its remarkable wealth of large mammals represents a zoological community which is unique in the world. For many centuries it has been a hunter’s paradise and since the dawn of human history in Africa, the wild animals of this vast continent were hunted by primitive man. Despite the toll taken by the super-predator the great herds of game encountered by the earliest European explorers bore ample testimony to the supposition that man and beast subsisted in perfect harmony in their chosen habitats, and the primitive hunter in fact occupied an important niche in the natural order.