Barkly West, sites in the ǀXam and ǂKhomani heartland, particularly rock art sites in the Karoo, and the stone walled ruins at Dithakong north east of Kuruman. Genocide The arrival of the European colonists exacerbated the conflict among the warring tribes in the Northern Cape. Colonial interactions gave the pastoralist tribes of Griqua, Baster, Korana, and other groups access to more advanced tools of war. Particularly, Griqua and Korana became more formidable, creating commando forces armed with firearms and horses for the purpose of killing the Sans while raiding their stocks. Succeeding developments led to the eventual genocide of this ethnic group. For instance, when it was discovered that the merino sheep was able to acclimatise to the Bushmanland, pastoralists had more cause to encroach on San territory. This was further reinforced by the development of the borehole technology for accessing groundwater, which made the semi-desert conditions livable. Finally, when copper was discovered in the area, San also became the target of the Boers and the Baster farmers pursuing commercial interests beginning in the 1850s. Aside from a series of massacres, the Boers further contributed to the genocide through their activities that induced the San's forced migration. All these effectively ended the independent San society in the Northern Cape in the 1860s. Louis Anthing first drew attention to the San's plight, exposing the acts of genocide against them in the Bushmanland/Upper Karoo area after the colonial boundary was extended to the Orange River in 1847. He revealed this in his remarkable letter to the Cape parliament in 1863. The government did not address Anthing's report and recommendations to protect what was left of the San due to the cost it would incur. Current research by Jose Manuel de Prada-Samper, Pippa Skotnes and colleagues begins to highlight this episode in South African history. Copper Boom Diamond Fields Conquest and Resistance Anglo-Boer War Struggle History In the 1980s the Northern Cape contributed in a relatively limited way to the struggle for a democratic dispensation in South Africa, it has been suggested. One study attributes this primarily to geographic and demographic factors: the province (as defined in 1994) covers some 30 percent of the country but has the smallest population, which stood at 840 000 people in 1994, representing just 2,1 percent of South Africa's total population. With a density of 2.3 persons per square kilometre, political mobilization was constrained except in the