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Just 20 miles from the bustling Johannesburg metropolis, a 183-square-mile of sacred ground bears witness to the prehistoric roots of the modern man—the “Cradle of Mankind,” a world heritage site located at Gauteng Province in South Africa (with some sites extending up to the North West Province).
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An anthropological treasure, the 47,000 hectares of land littered with dolomitic limestone caves have so far produced more than a dozen fossils of the earliest human inhabitants, along with their crude tools and prehistoric animals.
Palace Travel reviews attest to the possibility of an authentic African tour.
The most dramatic finds, however, were the over 850 hominid fossils, including the 2.5-million-year-old adult female Australopithecus africanus discovered at the Sterkfontein caves in 1936. She was later nicknamed “Mrs. Ples,” a shortened form of its initial name Plesianthropus transvaalensis or "near-man" of the Transvaal.
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Aside from other caves that produced faunal remains and some hominid fossils, the Swartkrans site just 1.5 kilometers northwest of the Sterkfontein Caves yielded fossils of Homo ergaster (means "working human"), an African Homo erectus that was said to be responsible for the first use of controlled fire at Swartkrans.
Now a must-see site in South Africa, the “Cradle of Mankind” is one of the richest locations that bring humankind to its prehistoric past.
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