The Emergence of Modern Humans: The Pleistocene occupation sites of South Africa

This World Heritage site is made up of three sites in the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal: Diepkloof Rock Shelter, the Pinnacle Point Site Complex and Sibudu Cave. Their record reaches back 162,000 years and gives the most varied and best-preserved picture known of how modern human behaviour developed. Finds include processed ochre, engraved patterns, decorative beads, advanced projectile weapons and microliths.

The caves at Pinnacle Point, just south of Mossel Bay, were first recognised in 1997 by the South African archaeologists Jonathan Kaplan and Peter Nilssen, and excavation has gone on since 2000. Cave 13B holds the earliest evidence of the systematic use of shellfish as food, and Cave 5-6 the oldest evidence of heating stone to make tools. Diepkloof Rock Shelter, near Elands Bay north of Cape Town, was first excavated in 1973 by John Parkington and Cedric Poggenpoel. Some 270 fragments of ostrich eggshell water containers engraved with geometric patterns about 60,000 years ago have been found there.

Sibudu Cave, north of Durban, was first excavated by Aron Mazel of the Natal Museum, and Lyn Wadley of the University of the Witwatersrand began new excavations in September 1998. Finds there include stone arrowheads 64,000 years old and bedding layered with insect-repelling leaves. South Africa placed the sites on its Tentative List in 2015, and three of them were inscribed in 2024.