March 18, 2005
By Lucille Davie
SAY GOODBYE to the shabby old café and one-room museum at the Sterkfontein Cave - the official launch of the new-look World Heritage Site took place at the cave on Thursday, 17 March.
By the end of March the café and museum will be demolished and the area will be restored to its natural grassy, shrub-dotted veld, once again resembling the small koppie where Wits University scientists first unearthed fossils in the 1920s, to be followed later by the discovery of Mrs Ples in 1947 and Little Foot in 1997.
Now, you can visit the new Sterkfontein Cave complex, consisting of a restaurant, auditorium, souvenir shop, hominid exhibition hall with interactive exhibits (to open in August 2005), a wooden walkway from which excavations can be viewed, and a look-in at the laboratory where scientists examine the fossil finds.
Sterkfontein Cave is one of 13 excavated fossil sites in the broader 47 000-hectare Cradle of Humankind site, some 50km north west of Johannesburg, indicated by a monolith at the roadside just off the R563. Some three million years of human activity have taken place in and around the cradle, including man's earliest-known mastery of fire. A huge 40 percent of all the world's human ancestor fossils have been found here, and excavations will probably continue for another 100 years.
"This is the longest palaentological dig in the world, and we plan to make Sterkfontein an iconic venue," says Rob King, the chief executive of FSG, the consortium responsible for the development.
Still under construction is the Mohale's Gate interpretation centre, a large man-made mound eight kilometres north of Sterkfontein that will offer an educational journey of discovery taking visitors back four billion years. It is positioned up the side of a koppie, where ancient rocky outcrops will mark the setting of a huge burial mound, referred to as a "tumulus", a partly disguised grassy mound 20m in height and 35m in diameter, in a teardrop shape, to be constructed of steel, glass and concrete.
Here the original Mrs Ples skull and other original hominid fossils will be on show; work on excavating the remaining skeleton of Little Foot continues at the Sterkfontein Cave. It is expected that Mohale's Gate will be open at the end of 2005.
The R163-million project involves the FSG consortium, Wits University and the Gauteng department of agriculture, conservation, environment and land affairs, which funded the development.
Roads leading to Sterkfontein are being improved, to the tune of R87-million, according to Paul Mashatile, the Gauteng MEC of finance and economic affairs. He says the province is very aware of the huge potential of the development to increase tourism in the area. In addition, some 1 200 construction jobs have already been created.
"This will become a major attraction for both local and international visitors," he reiterated, while at the same time acknowledging the historical importance of the site. "The Cradle of Humankind must be a place where human development is celebrated."
It is planned that visitors will start at Mohale's Gate, spend up to three hours there in self-guided explorations, then move on to the Sterkfontein Cave and take a tour of the cave, which descends 60 metres underground.
Ticket prices at Sterkfontein are R35 for adults and R20 for children, and the cave is open from 9am to 4pm, with guided tours every half an hour. The restaurant is open for lunch and dinner.
The site's logo, a human footprint inside a map of Africa, does not ignore finds made at other African sites, says King, but "the richest fossil finds come from this area".
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