No one had any idea what the Taung Child would have looked like as an adult. Furthermore, in addition to being from the wrong continent, the fossil was too ape-like to fit the earlyth-century view of human evolution. At the time, fossils like Piltdown Man indicated the earliest humans evolved big brains before other aspects of modern human physiology emerged—even before the ability to walk upright. Thus, experts dismissed the Taung fossil as just an old ape. But at least one person thought Dart was right.
The mounting evidence—plus the uncovering of the Piltdown Hoax in the late s and early s—convinced even the most ardent skeptics that australopithecines belonged in the human family, and that Africa was the birthplace of humans. The work dramatically altered the trajectory of human evolution studies, changing where people looked for human fossils and what they expected to find.
As fossils of australopithecines were uncovered in South African caves, Dart noticed they were always found in association with animal parts—particularly the teeth, jaws and horns of hoofed animals.
It is an area that has yielded and has continued to produce an enormous amount of information about our human origins. Apart from its scientific value, the site has been developed in order to create employment and regional economic development through the use of science, conservation and tourism as economic drivers aimed at alleviating poverty and stimulating the economy of the region.
In so doing, the province has used conservation as a catalyst for economic change and regional development. Return to the Exhibition Guide. Africa is the birthplace of humankind. This is where our collective umbilical cord lies buried.
The first stone tools were made and used in Africa, at least 2. In my mind, it was all very carefully constructed, and a place like this, where fossils were actually discovered, was straight out of a dream; something to cross off my bucket list. Shaped like a burial mound, the exhibition centre in Maropeng was a museum dedicated to the nearby excavation sites; highlighting the ground-breaking research and the fossils found. Inside, we took a small boat ride through the four elements and how they shaped the planet to sustain life.
It moved on to the creation of DNA, the theory of living Earth or the Gaia Principle and how our ecological footprints alter the planet. Later, we headed to the Sterkfontein Caves, a rough-cut staircase that led us through a limestone maze. These caves are one of the longest, most continuous palaeoanthropological dig sites in the world, with a surplus of fossils still being found.
And later, in , they dug up the 3. Deep into the labyrinth he pointed at the many closed-off tunnels that were still being excavated or were unsafe for tourists. It was when he quietly crept into a corner that we got curious. He ran his fingers along a small protrusion on the wall, beckoning us to do the same.
There were small ridges that I felt under my fingers; a piece of fossilised spine from a vertebrate long dead. If earlier, I was positively bubbling with excitement, now, I was overwhelmed. The connection to my being and to the world at large, so profound and grounding.
0コメント