Cradle of Humankind

The Cradle of Humankind is a UNESCO World Heritage Site comprising a network of limestone caves, most prominently the Sterkfontein Caves, that has produced one of the densest concentrations of early hominin fossils anywhere in the world — researchers estimate the area has yielded around 40% of all hominin fossils ever found. Among the most significant finds is "Mrs Ples," a roughly 2.1-million-year-old Australopithecus africanus skull discovered in 1947, and "Little Foot," a nearly complete Australopithecus skeleton — one of the most complete early hominin skeletons ever found — whose excavation, beginning in the 1990s, took over two decades due to the fragility of the bones and the hardness of the surrounding rock (breccia).

A separate chamber in the wider cave system, the Rising Star Cave, made headlines in 2015 when an international team led by palaeoanthropologist Lee Berger recovered the remains of at least 15 individuals of a previously unknown hominin species, Homo naledi, accessed only through a chute so narrow that the excavation team had to recruit cavers of slight build — advertised publicly as "underground astronauts." Subsequent dating placed the remains at around 250,000 to 300,000 years old, and in 2023 Berger's team controversially claimed evidence that Homo naledi, despite its small brain, may have deliberately buried its dead and created engravings on cave walls — claims that, if confirmed, would push back the origins of such behaviour far earlier than previously thought, though the dating and interpretation of these specific claims remain contested by other researchers.