UNESCO World Heritage Site | |
---|---|
Location | Limpopo, South Africa |
Part of | Fossil Hominid Sites of South Africa |
Criteria | Cultural: (iii)(vi) |
Reference | 915bis-002 |
Inscription | 1999 (23rd Session) |
Extensions | 2005 |
Area | 2,220 ha (5,500 acres) |
Buffer zone | 55,000 ha (140,000 acres) |
Coordinates | 24°9′31″S29°10′37″E / 24.15861°S 29.17694°E |
Makapansgat ( /mʌkʌˈpʌnsxʌt/ ) (or Makapan Valley World Heritage Site ) is an archaeological location within the Makapansgat and Zwartkrans Valleys, northeast of Mokopane in Limpopo province, South Africa. It is an important palaeontological site, [1] with the local limeworks containing Australopithecus -bearing deposits dating to between 3.0 and 2.6 million years BP. The whole Makapan Valley has been declared a South African Heritage Site. [2] Makapansgat belongs to the Cradle of Humankind.
This is the oldest of the cave sites in the Makapansgat valley, spanning an age of greater than 4.0 million years until perhaps 1.6 million years ago. This site has yielded many thousands of fossil bones, amongst which were found remains of the gracile australopithecine Australopithecus africanus . The A. africanus fossils are suggested to date to between 2.85 and 2.58 million years ago based on palaeomagnetism by Andy Herries (La Trobe University, Australia). [3] The site was recently excavated by a joint project between the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and Arizona State University in the US.
The Cave of Hearths is close to the Historic Cave complex and preserves a remarkably complete record of human occupation from Early Stone Age "Acheulian" times in the oldest sediments through the Middle Stone Age, the Later Stone Age and up to the Iron Age. [4] European relics from the 19th century, such as brass ware and musket balls were found at the surface when excavations started. The site was re-excavated and re-analysed as part of the 'Makapan Middle Pleistocene Research Project' run by the University of Liverpool (UK) between 1996 and 2001. [5] This work has shown that coloured sediment horizons in the Early Stone Age levels are not from fire use. A Homo mandible also recovered from these layers may also represent one of the earliest representatives of Homo sapiens . [6]
A small number of fossils were thought to have been collected by Dr Robert Broom from this site in 1937, including the remains of an extinct 'pygmy buffalo', Bos makapania , for which the cave is named. [7] More recent excavations have revealed an extensive 'Cornelian Land Mammal Age' fauna including antelope, horses, pigs, monkeys and carnivores. The fauna, along with palaeomagnetic age estimates by Andy Herries (La Trobe University, Australia) suggest an age of between 990,000 and 780,000 years for the main fossil bearing layers. [7] Basal flowstone deposits are estimated to go back to around 2 million years and show evidence for the beginning of the 'Walker circulation' at around 1.7 million years ago. [8]
The cave gets its name from the fig tree Ficus ingens roots which curtain its entrance. This cave contains Iron Age and 19th-century relics, a large bat colony and an underground lake. An Iron Age site close by yields occupational debris from approximately Early Iron Age (550 AD), 870 AD and the Late Iron Age (1560 AD). The slopes adjacent to the cave are artificially terraced and archaeological finds from these include potsherds, grindstones, hammer stones and relics of iron smelting operations, including ore, slag and fragments of tuyeres.
This cave contains Iron Age and ancient relics and an underground lake. It is also home to a large colony of migratory long-fingered bats, Miniopterus schreibersii .
This cave is situated immediately below the Historic Cave and contains the remains of several putative hearths, suggesting both human occupation and the controlled use of fire. The exposed sediments have yielded Middle Stone Age artefacts of the Pietersburg Culture of between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago. Recent studies have shown that the coloured horizons are not hearths but are more likely ancient pool deposits. [9]
This site lies immediately adjacent to the Cave of Hearths, and preserves Iron Age and Mfecane relics. It is most famous as the clash between a Boer Commando and local Langa and Kekana people after the murders of Voortrekkers at Moorddrift, Mapela and Pruizen. Chief Makapan (Mokopane), together with a large number of his tribespeople and their cattle were besieged in the cave for nearly a month between 25 October and 21 November 1854, during which time many hundreds died of hunger and thirst. [10] Piet Potgieter was shot during the siege and the name of the nearby town was changed from Vredenburg to 'Pieter Potgietersrust', which later changed to 'Potgietersrus'. As of the early 21st century (c. early 2000s), after the transition from the Apartheid government into majority rule, there has been a trend to rename several national and provincial government institutions (including educational institutions), roads, public infrastructures, towns, cities, etc. As a result, the town has been controversially re-renamed to Mokopane, in honour of Chief Mokopane. The cave was proclaimed a National Monument in 1936.
Stable isotope analyses of a uranium-series-dated stalagmite from Cold Air Cave provided a record of climate changes for the periods 4400–4000 years and approximately 800 years ago until the present day.
This cave was located and explored in 2000 by A. Herries, A. Latham and W. Murzel. After breaking through a number of tight squeezes, the cave opened out into a large chamber. The floor of the chamber was covered in hearths. An inscription on the wall of the cave was from the 19th century and indicated that a previous entrance to the cave had collapsed and sealed the cavity after this date.
This cave was located and explored in 1998 by A. Herries and A. Latham. Digging out of the entrance led to a climb and traverse down into a series of lower decorated chambers. [11]
Katzenjammer Cave is located adjacent to Peppercorn's Cave. An entrance shaft leads down to a narrow climb and entrance to a network of passages at the same level as the far reaches of Peppercorn's Cave. The entrance shaft has formed by the collapse of fossil bearing deposits (including the Giant Dasie) into the lower modern cave system, Katzenjammer Cave. The entrance shaft area and fossil deposits were collectively termed Herries' Hole by the Makapan Middle Pleistocene Research Project.
Makapansgat Valley has been described as having one of the greatest palaeontological records of human evolution in the world. [12] Collecting at the site began in 1925, when a local school teacher, Wilfred Eitzman, was attracted by the activities of limeworkers. Some fossil material was sent to Raymond Dart, who initiated a systematic investigation in 1947. [12] [13] Eitzman also discovered the so-called "Makapansgat pebble" associated with the bones. About 3,000,000 years ago, the pebble is shaped naturally to resemble a human face, it is thought to have been found by an Australopithecus and carried from its source into the Makapansgat cave. It has been suggested that this pebble represents the earliest known example of symbolic thinking of early hominids. [14] [15]
The rocks that Professor Dart received from Mr Eitzman turned out to contain, amongst others, blackened fossil bones which led him to believe that they had been burnt. Although no hominid remains or stone tools were found at first, he concluded that these were the remains of bones burnt in fireplaces and therefore that Makapansgat was a site of early hominid occupation. Dart named the first hominids discovered at the site Australopithecus prometheus after the mythological Greek hero who stole fire from the Gods. Afterwards the black markings turned out to be manganese stains and Australopithecus prometheus were recognised as specimens of Australopithecus africanus . After analysing 7,159 fossil bones, Dart concluded that these creatures, in an era before stone tools were discovered, used tools made from bone, teeth and horn, naming it the Osteodontokeratic Culture.
In 1936, the Historical Monuments Commission was asked to declare Makapan's Cave a National Monument and Professor Clarence van Riet Lowe, Secretary of the commission and Director of the Archaeological Survey of the Union of South Africa, visited the site in 1937. He inspected the Historic Cave and discovered, close by, an abandoned limeworker's adit that cut through a calcified cave infill. In this infill he saw fossil bones, stone tools, and what he took to be ash horizons representing ancient hearths. At first he referred to it as part of Makapan's Cave, but he later renamed it "The Cave of Hearths".
Further research during June and October 1937 revealed the Rainbow Cave. The site was visited by Clarence Van Riet Lowe, Raymond Dart, and Robert Broom. H. B. S. Cooke of the Geology Department of the University of the Witwatersrand conducted a geological survey of the area (1941) followed by L. C. King in 1951.
In July 1945, Philip Tobias led a group of students to the valley, where they discovered the "Hyaena Cave" next to Van Riet Lowe's site. Further down the valley, from a cave next to the limeworks, they collected a large fossil horse's lower jaw, which supplied a name for the "Cave of the Horse's Mandible".
After these discoveries, Dr Bernard Price made a research grant available for systematic excavations, which started at the Cave of Hearths in 1947, with field work being carried out by Guy Gardiner, James Kitching, and his brothers Ben and Scheepers. One of the most significant discoveries was a Homo lower jaw from Bed 3, by Ben. In 1953, Dr R. J. Mason was placed in charge of the excavations. The stratigraphic sequence was determined during 1953–1954.
After the Kitching brothers discovered an ape-man braincase amongst the limeworks dumps in 1947, Dart organised for the lime miner's dumps to be hand-sorted to recover as much fossil-bearing material as possible. After 45 years of research, many thousands of fossils from this site have been identified and catalogued.
Brian Maguire studied rocks which were brought into the caves during prehistoric times (1965, 1968, 1980). He interpreted this to represent rudimentary stone tool making activities dated at around 2.3 – 1.6 million years ago, however, recent analysis has shown this information to be incorrect.
Recent work at the sites in the late 1990s and early 2000s was done by these groups:
Australopithecus (, OS-trə-lə-PITH-i-kəs, -loh-; or is a genus of early hominins that existed in Africa during the Pliocene and Early Pleistocene. The genera Homo, Paranthropus, and Kenyanthropus evolved from some Australopithecus species. Australopithecus is a member of the subtribe Australopithecina, which sometimes also includes Ardipithecus, though the term "australopithecine" is sometimes used to refer only to members of Australopithecus. Species include A. garhi, A. africanus, A. sediba, A. afarensis, A. anamensis, A. bahrelghazali and A. deyiremeda. Debate exists as to whether some Australopithecus species should be reclassified into new genera, or if Paranthropus and Kenyanthropus are synonymous with Australopithecus, in part because of the taxonomic inconsistency.
The Cradle of Humankind is a paleoanthropological site that is located about 50 km (31 mi) northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa, in the Gauteng province. Declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1999, the site is home to the largest known concentration of human ancestral remains anywhere in the world. The site currently occupies 47,000 hectares (180 sq mi) and contains a complex system of limestone caves. The registered name of the site in the list of World Heritage Sites is Fossil Hominid Sites of South Africa.
Sterkfontein is a set of limestone caves of special interest in paleoanthropology located in Gauteng province, about 40 kilometres (25 mi) northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa in the Muldersdrift area close to the town of Krugersdorp. The archaeological sites of Swartkrans and Kromdraai are in the same area. Sterkfontein is a South African National Heritage Site and was also declared a World Heritage Site in 2000. The area in which it is situated is known as the Cradle of Humankind. The Sterkfontein Caves are also home to numerous wild African species including Belonogaster petiolata, a wasp species of which there is a large nesting presence.
A manuport is a natural object that has been deliberately taken from its original environment and relocated without further modification. Typically moved by human hand, some manuports are the result of other hominins. Common manuports include stones, seashells and fossils, which has led archaeologists and anthropologists to conclude they must have been chosen for their beauty. This recognition of an object’s aesthetic character suggests that certain manuports represent some of the earliest examples of art.
Africa has the longest record of human habitation in the world. The first hominins emerged 6–7 million years ago, and among the earliest anatomically modern human skulls found so far were discovered at Omo Kibish,Jebel Irhoud, and Florisbad.
Australopithecus africanus is an extinct species of australopithecine which lived between about 3.3 and 2.1 million years ago in the Late Pliocene to Early Pleistocene of South Africa. The species has been recovered from Taung, Sterkfontein, Makapansgat, and Gladysvale. The first specimen, the Taung child, was described by anatomist Raymond Dart in 1924, and was the first early hominin found. However, its closer relations to humans than to other apes would not become widely accepted until the middle of the century because most had believed humans evolved outside of Africa. It is unclear how A. africanus relates to other hominins, being variously placed as ancestral to Homo and Paranthropus, to just Paranthropus, or to just P. robustus. The specimen "Little Foot" is the most completely preserved early hominin, with 90% of the skeleton intact, and the oldest South African australopith. However, it is controversially suggested that it and similar specimens be split off into "A. prometheus".
Koobi Fora refers primarily to a region around Koobi Fora Ridge, located on the eastern shore of Lake Turkana in the territory of the nomadic Gabbra people. According to the National Museums of Kenya, the name comes from the Gabbra language:
In the language of the Gabbra people who live near the site, the term Koobi Fora means a place of the commiphora and the source of myrrh...
James William Kitching was a South African vertebrate palaeontologist and regarded as one of the world’s greatest fossil finders.
The Evolutionary Studies Institute (ESI) is a paleontological, paleoanthropological and archeological research institute operated through the Faculty of Science of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Previously known as the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research (BPI) it was renamed the Evolutionary Studies Institute in 2013 to better showcase the scope of its research.
"Little Foot" is the nickname given to a nearly complete Australopithecus fossil skeleton found in 1994–1998 in the cave system of Sterkfontein, South Africa.
Lee Rogers Berger is an American-born South African paleoanthropologist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. He is best known for his discovery of the Australopithecus sediba type site, Malapa; his leadership of Rising Star Expedition in the excavation of Homo naledi at Rising Star Cave; and the Taung Bird of Prey Hypothesis.
The control of fire by early humans was a critical technology enabling the evolution of humans. Fire provided a source of warmth and lighting, protection from predators, a way to create more advanced hunting tools, and a method for cooking food. These cultural advances allowed human geographic dispersal, cultural innovations, and changes to diet and behavior. Additionally, creating fire allowed human activity to continue into the dark and colder hours of the evening.
The Mumbwa Caves are an archeological site in Zambia. The site has yielded artifacts that date from the Mesolithic, Neolithic and the Iron Age. The caves are a source of stratified, in situ deposits with faunal and human remains. Mumbwa, with its interior structures, demonstrates the complexity of the behavioral abilities of the people from the Mesolithic. Selection of raw materials along with features such as hearths suggests a population which was modern in its behaviors used to inhabit the Mumbwa Caves. Study and excavation of the Mumbwa Caves is helping to fill in the gaps in the late Pleistocene prehistory of south central Africa.
The Makapansgat pebble or Makapansgat cobble is a pebble with natural chipping and wear patterns that make it look like a crude rendition of a human face, in fact at least two possible faces. Some scholars argue that it is the oldest known manuport.
The Drimolen Palaeocave System consists of a series of terminal Pliocene to early Pleistocene hominin-bearing palaeocave fills located around 40 kilometres (25 mi) north of Johannesburg, South Africa, and about 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) north of Sterkfontein in the UNESCO World Heritage Site Cradle of Humankind.
Gondolin Cave is a fossiliferous dolomitic paleocave system in the Northwest Province, South Africa. The paleocave formed in the Eccles Formation dolomites. Gondolin is currently the only described hominin-bearing fossil site in the Northwest Province-portion of the designated Cradle of Humankind UNESCO World Heritage Site. The cave is located on privately owned land and is not accessible to the public. As is the case with other South African Paleo-cave systems with Pliocene and/or Pleistocene fossil deposits, the system was mined for lime during the early 20th century. As a result, the system has been heavily disturbed and consists of only a small active cave, a series of in situ remnant cave deposits, and extensive dumpsites of ex situ calcified sediments produced during mining activities.
Haasgat is a fossiliferous South African paleocave located in the Cradle of Humankind UNESCO World Heritage Area, approx. 20 kilometres (12 mi) northeast of the hominin-bearing sites of Sterkfontein and Swartkrans and approx. 60 kilometres (37 mi) north-northwest of the City of Johannesburg. It is located on private land and is not accessible by the public.
The Osteodontokeraticculture (ODK) is a hypothesis that was developed by Prof. Raymond Dart, which detailed the predatory habits of Australopith species in South Africa involving the manufacture and use of osseous implements. Dart envisaged Australopithecus africanus, known from Taung and Sterkfontein caves, and Australopithecus prometheus from Makapansgat, as carnivorous, cannibalistic predators who utilized bone and horn implements to hunt various animals, such as antelopes and primates, as well as other Australopiths.
Bolt's Farm is a palaeontological site in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, Gauteng province, South Africa. With more than 30 fossil deposits dating back 4.5 Ma, it is one of the oldest sites currently discovered in the Cradle of Humankind. It consists of multiple cavities, pits, and quarries, where caves have eroded away, exposing their fossiliferous interiors. Although this site has not yet yielded the hominid fossils for which the Cradle of Humankind is known, Bolt's Farm is still an important source of fossils from various species of Early Pliocene and Plio-Pleistocene fauna, including primates and big cats.