A trip to the Greater Cradle Nature Reserve in the Cradle of Humankind reveals the precariousness of our ancestral past.
Researchers were able to discover fossils of our early ancestors because of a strip of limestone caves which covers the Cradle of Humankind Site. One of the ways of identifying caves or sinkholes is to look for the occurrence of lime-loving trees which mark the top of an underground cavity into which their roots grow.
Paul drives my two teenage sons, my partner and me on a refreshing rough-and-tumble meandering trip on the back of an open-top game-drive vehicle through parts of the 9,000ha privately owned Greater Cradle Nature Reserve. Origins guide Paul Zille points to the highest peak where the earth’s crust first emerged from the ocean that covered our planet
The giraffe led to a debate about evolution and why the giraffe developed its long neck to distinguish itself from the rest of its antelope family. The ability to forage for food in high treetops was one theory. Another theory by a researcher in the 1990s, I later discovered, is a “necks for sex” hypothesis — that male giraffes developed necks to bash each other in competition for females.
Despite facing ridicule and scepticism from his peers, Dart remained steadfast in his belief that humankind was born in Africa — a theory that would later be vindicated by the discovery of numerous hominid fossils across the continent. Scottish doctor and fossil hunter Robert Broom continued Dart’s legacy, making significant finds at Sterkfontein that further cemented Africa’s place as the cradle of humankind.
What looks deceptively like a bright splash of colour in the bushveld is an invasive South American invader pompom weed which poses a great risk to the conservation of South African grasslands
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