Cradle of Humankind

Friday 11th September

Rustenburg

The news here over the last two days has been dominated by the announcement of the discovery of a new species of hominid fossil at the Cradle of Humankind, the UNESCO World Heritage Site where "Little Foot" and "Mrs Ples" were found.

 

Although back in the direction we've just come from, we decided that such a momentous announcement warranted a visit.  Beginning at Sterkfontein, the caves where Little Foot was found, we donned hard hats and headed underground.  Clearly not seasoned climbers, a lot of bum-shuffling over the rocks led us eventually to the lowest reaches of the cave.  The caves are so dark, it is believed they have never been inhabited, but rather that Little Foot fell to his death through an opening.

 

At the site of the discover of Mrs Ples, we discovered that "Mrs" was actually a "Mr", but the original name sticks - nice to know that our distant ancestors needn't have been gender binary.

 

At the exhibition centre, coach loads of school children arrives and showed great fascination and delight at the first glimpse of something they'd never seen before: not the ancient fossils, but the wonder that was an automatic hand dryer.  A queue of young boys dared each other to place a hand under it, then when it started, to run away giggling.

 

From here, we headed to Maropeng, a name meaning "returning to where you came from".  Here, an exhibition guides through the history of the earth and the evolution of life to its current stage.  Interestingly, if the history of the Earth were compressed into one day, human beings wouldn't appear until half a second before midnight.

 

Homo Naledi

At the end of the exhibition came what we were here for - sight of the new hominid fossil.

 

It showed a remarkably intact, very small person-like skeleton of a type never before discovered.  It has not yet been dated, but if it proves to be over 2million years old, this will be the oldest 'homo' species ever discovered.  If it proves younger than that, it will show that more than one species of 'homo' lives in southern Africa at the same time - either way, a remarkable find, and a privilege to be amongst the first to see.

 

The exit from this exhibition posed the great existential questions "What is life?" and "What do you believe?" Pondering these may while away a sleepless night, but a piece of wall art brought home a more stark reality: "We need to find ways to fight poverty and sustain the environment: over 800m people know what it feels like to go to bed hungry."