Karoo were very large and the family group moved from one part to the other. Their only domestic animals were dogs. The Bantu people to the east of the Great Karoo did not occupy this arid region due to the scarce rainfall which prevented the farming of cattle. In 1854, Daniel Halladay invented the multibladed windpump (windmill) in the USA. It was perfected in 1883, and soon South Africa (and elsewhere) produced them in large numbers. These windpumps transformed the Great Karoo, making permanent settlement and stock farming (predominantly sheep) possible over large parts of the Karoo for the first time.
Karoo plain with Mississippi-like rivers depositing mud from an immense range of mountains to the south. Ancient reptiles and amphibians prospered in the wet forests, and their remains have made the Karoo famous amongst palaeontologists. The first of these Karoo fossils was discovered in 1838 by Scots-born Andrew Geddes Bain at a road cutting near Fort Beaufort. He sent his specimens to the British Museum, where fellow Scotsman Robert Broom recognised the Karoo fossils' mammal-like characteristics in 1897. After the Beaufort period, Southern Africa (still part of Gondwana) became an arid sand desert with only ephemeral rivers and pans. These sands