MAROPENG.CO.ZA: Within the [Sterkfontein] caves, scientists have discovered many hominid and other animal fossils, dating back more than 4-million years, to the birth of humanity. The most important and most famous of these fossils are “Mrs Ples”, a 2.1-million-year-old Australopithecus skull, and “Little Foot”, an almost complete Australopithecus skeleton that is more than 3-million years old. These fossils, both found in the Sterkfontein Caves in the Cradle of Humankind, tell us much about the precursors of modern humans, Homo sapiens.
SHOOT: Some of the oldest evidence of hominids has been discovered in Ethiopia and a 7-million-year-old Toumai fossil from Chad. But it seems the Sterkfontein Caves provided a sancturary for early man for a very long time. Many thousands of centuries.
ON WINTER weekends us city types don’t want to get out of bed too early to take long drives.
That’s why The Cradle, a 3000 hectare World Heritage site is an ideal weekend jaunt for jaded city slickers. It’s a short distance, no more than an hour’s drive from both Jozi and Pretoria , and there’s more than enough in The Cradle to soothe you back to normal.
If you do find yourself early on a Saturday in The Cradle, on Kromdraai Road, weaving through the misty countryside, you’ll be in the company of ribbons of cyclists – the Cyclelab riders – who move in almost endless echelons into the heart of The Cradle and out again from the Montecasino area. So if you want to find the area without looking on a map, follow the riders from about 6am onwards.
The Cradle gets its name from the fossils that have been discovered in this area.
They made this area their home for a long time. Our ancestors are said to have lived in this area for more than 3million years.
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