Cradle of Humankind SA - Part 3

These were behind glass and I had to use the camera's flash - please excuse the glare of it in the photographs.
Our world was born in a ball of burning gas 4.6-billion years ago, in a universe that is about 14-billion years old. Over time it cooled, the early atmosphere formed, and the first land masses appeared.

The first life forms, which were like the black algae you sometimes see in swimming pools today, emerged about 3.8-billion years ago.

The history of life on Earth has been rocked by five major extinctions. The last great extinction was 65-million years ago, when the dinosaurs were wiped out, probably after a giant meteor slammed into the Earth off the coast of Mexico, and set off volcanic eruptions all over the world, changing the global climate. Today, some scientists say we are in the midst of the sixth major extinction – and its cause is us.

We know about species which have populated our Earth before us by studying fossils. Fossils are the remains of plants or animals which have been turned into stone over a long period of time in a process known as “mineralisation”.

Charles Darwin, an English naturalist, was one of the first people to express a theory of evolution – the idea that species change over time, as they adapt to changing environments.

Cradle of Humankind SA - Part 2

The fossil Hominid sites of Southern Africa comprises of the Cradle of Humankind, Taung and Makapan sites. The Cradle of Humankind is situated on 47,000 hectares of privately owned land and consists of 13 Palacontological sites.
The tour bigins with a boat ride which starts at the present and continues on a trip back through time, retracing the various stages of the creation of our earth. Snow-making and ice-producing machines give voyagers an indication of what the most recent ice age may have been like.

The beginning, when the earth was a fiery ball of molten rock.......

The journey goes back further into time, when the world was submerged in water,

and beyond that to the formation of the earth’s crust

and the shifting of the tectonic plates.

The ride ends dramatically in a simulated ‘black hole’. Scientists theorise that our world came into existence as a result of the collapse of the first star, creating a ‘black hole’ with a powerful gravitational pull. The force of the explosion created momentum amongst some of the dust, rocks and gas produced in the ‘Big Bang’ 14-million years ago. These particles were drawn into the centre of the ‘black hole’, gradually amassing into matter which eventually created the earth.

The boat ride ends in front of an audio-visual presentation of the formation of the earth, providing further understanding of the sensory experience of the boat.

Cradle of Humankind SA - Part 1

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.