Cradle of Humankind
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How it came to be
About 50 kilometres north-west of Johannesburg, South Africa, lies a system of limestone caves that has yielded fossils tracing human evolution over at least the past 3.5 million years. In 1935 Robert Broom found the first human fossils at Sterkfontein.
In 1947 Broom and John Robinson recovered 'Mrs Ples', a skull of Australopithecus africanus about 2.3 million years old. It supported the juvenile skull that Raymond Dart had found at Taung in 1924. At Swartkrans, evidence of controlled fire more than a million years old was found.
Phillip Tobias began digging at Sterkfontein in 1966, and the work continues as the world's longest-running fossil excavation. The site was inscribed in 1999, and Taung and the Makapan Valley were added in 2005.
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