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Cradle of Humankind

Monday, 21 April 2025 - 11:00 am (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination: Africa / Afrika
Category/Kategorie: General, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time:  3 minutes

🔊 Listen to this Post 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 (120,000 acres) 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.

According to the South African Journal of Science, Bolt’s Farm is the place where the earliest primates were discovered. Bolt’s Farm was heavily mined for speleothem (calcium carbonate from stalagmites, stalactites, and flowstones) in the terminal nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Sterkfontein Caves were the site of the discovery of a 2.3-million-year-old fossil Australopithecus africanus (nicknamed “Mrs. Ples“), found in 1947 by Robert Broom and John T. Robinson. The find helped corroborate the 1924 discovery by Raymond Dart of the juvenile Australopithecus africanus skull known as the “Taung Child” at Taung in the North West Province of South Africa, where excavations still continue.

Nearby, but not in the site, the Rising Star Cave system contains the Dinaledi Chamber (chamber of stars), in which were discovered fifteen fossil skeletons of an extinct species of hominin, provisionally named Homo naledi.

Sterkfontein alone has produced more than a third of early hominid fossils found prior to 2010. The Dinaledi Chamber contains more than 1,500 H. naledi bone specimens from at least 15 individuals, the most extensive discovery of a single hominid species ever found in Africa.

Read more on Wikivoyage Cradle of Humankind and Wikipedia Cradle of Humankind (Smart Traveler App by U.S. Department of State - Weather report by weather.com - Global Passport Power Rank - Travel Risk Map - Democracy Index - GDP according to IMF, UN, and World Bank - Global Competitiveness Report - Corruption Perceptions Index - Press Freedom Index - World Justice Project - Rule of Law Index - UN Human Development Index - Global Peace Index - Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index). Photos by Wikimedia Commons. If you have a suggestion, critique, review or comment to this blog entry, we are looking forward to receive your e-mail at comment@wingsch.net. Please name the headline of the blog post to which your e-mail refers to in the subject line.

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