Early dawn finds me on the road to "Maropeng - The Cradle of Humankind" situated about an hours drive from where I live.
But who can pass up the chance to stop along the road to photograph the beautiful wild Cosmos flowers which grow there in abundance all summer long.
Along the path leading to the entrance, these stone tablets give a brief glimps of what is to be expected inside.
The architecture of Maropeng, designed by GAPP Architects and MMA (Mphethi Morejele Architects), was based on the theme of discovery.
When you approach the site, you see seven concrete fingers or 14m high concrete columns, signifying the centre, which moves in and out of sight along its approach. The concrete fingers have words on them that hint at the major themes of the exhibition, such as “Imagine”, “Explore”, “Contemplate”, and “Discover”.
The marketplace where you buy your tickets and a grassed amphitheatre that accommodates 10 000 people are sunken into the grounds around the Maropeng Visitor Centre, housed in the Tumulus Building. The Tumulus Building is evocative of a giant burial mound or perhaps an enormous buried fossil, with concrete “bones” sticking out the top.
There is a learner centre and a hotel inside the development, which are mostly hidden in the rolling hills. All these aspects of Maropeng encourage the visitor to discover more, to dig deeper as a palaeoanthropologist would while looking for fossils embedded in rock, to find Maropeng’s many diverse aspects.
The Maropeng Visitor Centre is an exciting, world-class exhibition, focusing on the development of humans and our ancestors over the past few million years.
On arrival, you will see a massive burial mound called the Tumulus, which is your entrance to learning the secrets of our ancestry.
But who can pass up the chance to stop along the road to photograph the beautiful wild Cosmos flowers which grow there in abundance all summer long.
Along the path leading to the entrance, these stone tablets give a brief glimps of what is to be expected inside.
The architecture of Maropeng, designed by GAPP Architects and MMA (Mphethi Morejele Architects), was based on the theme of discovery.
When you approach the site, you see seven concrete fingers or 14m high concrete columns, signifying the centre, which moves in and out of sight along its approach. The concrete fingers have words on them that hint at the major themes of the exhibition, such as “Imagine”, “Explore”, “Contemplate”, and “Discover”.
The marketplace where you buy your tickets and a grassed amphitheatre that accommodates 10 000 people are sunken into the grounds around the Maropeng Visitor Centre, housed in the Tumulus Building. The Tumulus Building is evocative of a giant burial mound or perhaps an enormous buried fossil, with concrete “bones” sticking out the top.
There is a learner centre and a hotel inside the development, which are mostly hidden in the rolling hills. All these aspects of Maropeng encourage the visitor to discover more, to dig deeper as a palaeoanthropologist would while looking for fossils embedded in rock, to find Maropeng’s many diverse aspects.
The Maropeng Visitor Centre is an exciting, world-class exhibition, focusing on the development of humans and our ancestors over the past few million years.
On arrival, you will see a massive burial mound called the Tumulus, which is your entrance to learning the secrets of our ancestry.
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