Ever evolving

Another weekend in Joburg called for an adventure to the Cradle of Humankind.

I’ve been wanting to tick this one off my “World wonders” list for a long time, so I was super excited to finally spend the day looking at the history of Human Evolution.

We started off at the Maropeng visitor centre.

I had absolutely no idea that such a big percentage of the world’s fossils and pre-historic tools were found in South Africa.

It was a fantastic journey through the ages as the museum starts with a boat ride through the elements, freezing as you go through the ice, dodging as it starts to rain, sweating through fire and holding on through wind.

Then you walk through a tunnel that supposedly helps you experience what the big bang was like, and my oh my is that possibly true - I mean, no one would ever know, but it sure was very trippy walking through this anti-gravity illusion, stumbling over as I walked even though the ground in front of me was flat and straight.

I’m even feeling dizzy writing about it.

We then went through the very interactive museum, seeing the artefacts and fossils, playing all the games of guessing the species or matching up the ancestors to their animals, looking at human inventions and evolution of language and personalities.

It’s incredible how much humans have accomplished, there was a short film showing off big steps that humans have made, the invention of transport methods, chemical developments, media and marketing, entertainment, art, literature, music - you name it.

I left feeling proud to be a human - although not quite as proud as Dean, who is actually a Human by name.

After the Maropeng visitor centre, we headed to the Sterkfontein caves, where Mrs. Ples and Little Foot (Australopithecus Africanus Fossils) were discovered.

Mrs. Ples is the most complete Australopithecus Africanus skull found in South Africa, and Little Foot (above image) is another very nearly complete Australopithecus fossil also found in South Africa.

Our guide in the caves had a part time gig as a stand up comedian it seemed, as he walked and talked us through the geological facts of the cave with a joke joke here and a joke joke there.

He pointed to where Little Foot was found, but unfortunately we couldn’t go any closer to where the fossils were actually found due to inefficient funds to make it more accessible.

But to combat this, our guide noted, they have lowered the rates for pensioners with the hopes that more of them will do the tour and end up providing the tour with more fossils to look at…

There was also a very eery lake at the deepest section of the cave, which just continued and continued into the distant darkness, sparking many a thought of mermaids and sea creatures that have never been discovered by humans who lurk in the deepest darkest shadows of the oceans.

(Yep, I truly do believe they exist and yes, I did get a little panic attack having to walk at the back of the group away from the dark waters with the guide’s torch disappearing ahead).