"our ancestors  walked here. we are their children..."

The world’s richest hominid site and world heritage treasure is  only 50 minutes away from Johannesburg and 25 minutes from Lanseria International Airport. The Cradle of Humankind was declared a World heritage site in 1999 due to the vast  numbers of well preserved fossils and stone tools of hominids (humans, their ancestors and bi-pedal relatives) telling the story of human origin and heritage.

There are 15 major fossil sites in the Cradle of Humankind, from more than 3.3 million years ago through early and late stone-age and up to the present day, Sterkfontein Caves being the most famous. The fossils “Mrs Ples” and “Little Foot” were both discovered here, as well as thousands more fossils of hominids, plants and animals. 

The oldest hominid fossils from the Cradle are and belong to the genus Australopithecus, which lived in Eastern and Southern Africa the famous fossil skull of an Australopithecus africanus, "Mrs Ples", was discovered at the Sterkfontein Caves by palaeontologists Dr Robert Broom and John Robinson in 1947. “Mrs Ples” is about 2.8-million years old. In 1997, palaeontologist Professor Ron Clarke and his assistants Stephen Motsumi and Nkwane Molefe, discovered the full skeleton of an Australopithecus inside the Sterkfontein Caves, encased in breccia, a type of rock. This skeleton, called “Little Foot”, who lived here around 3 million years ago, is still being excavated. 

After Australopithecus came the genus Homo, to which we humans, Homo sapiens, belong. The earliest named Homo species is Homo habilis or “handy man”, which researchers believe made the first stone tools. Homo habilis emerged about 2.5-million years ago. After Homo habilis came, among others, Homo ergaster, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo floresiensis and Homo Sapiens – us. These species lived in different parts of the world. Not all Homo species were direct ancestors of humans. The human family tree has many branches, several of which broke off as species became extinct.

Modern humans, Homo sapiens, emerged only about 200,000 years ago. While older species of Homo, such as Homo erectus, lived in Asia and Europe mostly, scientists believe that modern humans, like our most distant ancestors such as Toumai and the australopithecines, evolved here in Africa.

the sum of us : changing the faces over 5 million years.