No Fixed Abode: The Cradle

Wed 20 July 2016 - The Cradle of Humankind, SA

We had intended to leave early but breakfast in bed is never a good way to expedite getting up so we ended up a little late. Today we visited the Cradle of Humankind, an area of South Africa with the perfect combination of rocks and terrain to create and preserve fossils in caves where many remains of our ancestors have been found and the last place recommended by Carol and Philip, our SA friends.

On a hope we punched it in the sat nav and were surprised that it found it and presented a route so we joined the N4 and sped on our way. An hour and several sets of roadworks later we turned off the and followed a regional road across the rolling hills - a very pleasant change from the flat plains of Botswana. We followed brown (tourist) direction signs that were contrary to the sat nav and ended up taking a massive detour until we gave up, followed the sat nav and reached the Maropeng visitor centre. It seems a large area is named ‘The Cradle of Humankind’ and we hadn’t realised the visitor centre had a name of it's own.

So, somewhat later than intended, we arrived at the centre, bought our tickets and entered the very snazzy foyer. Maropeng is a hands on centre dealing with man's evolution from apes and the fossil record that identify the various hominid species that ultimately ended up with home sapiens i.e. us. The entrance took us on a small boat ride through the four elements of water, earth, fire and air trying to give us a feeling of going back through time with volcanic activity and ice ages. It was very Disney but must be good to grab children's attention. Once off the boat we walked through a rotating cylinder covered with stars that was very disorientating but not sure what relevance it had and finally we emerged in a large underground hall containing all the exhibits.

At first we pretty much had it to ourselves and we spent a long time reading the information boards and looking at the life sized models of what the experts think our ancestors looked like. It was interesting to learn about the evolutionary stages e.g. standing up to walk on two legs, and the advantage each bestowed, freeing the hands for other tasks, initially food gathering, and how we slowly developed larger brains, controlled fire, made tools and developed speech. We really are quite amazing.

As we neared the final exhibits about our advanced skills a large group of teenage schoolchildren entered making a heck of a racket. They whisked through the exhibits, paying very little attention, then went outside - not sure how much they learned.

As they left and calm returned we walked along one of the walls which had information about global warming, overpopulation, water scarcity that sort of thing and as we left we got the twin message - it’s taken hundreds of thousands of years to get to where we are now and if we’re not careful we’re going to destroy it all. Apparently there have been 5 mass extinction events in history (asteroid collisions, ice ages etc) and many experts believe we are in the process of a 6th - the first ever caused by one species on all others. That’s not one for the cv!

Once out of the centre we took a short walk and then returned to the car to find our hotel. Glenn pulled up the booking and found there was no address, only some directions, so we poured over the maps to try and make sense of them when Yvonne noticed the name was the same as the visitor centre. She asked the security guard for directions and found the hotel was on site, just around the corner. What a result. And to make things even better the hotel was gorgeous: modern, bright, well finished, fabulous views and with the fastest internet we’ve had in Africa. We cranked the heating up, a real treat, slipped into the thick towel dressing gowns and spent hours surfing, blogging and communicating with home. Later we snuggled into the comfy warm bed and pondered what breakfast would be like.