"Samson chamber, the Rhino Horn, the Ostrich, the hollow stalactites, and Crystal Palace. Echo Caves The Echo Caves in Limpopo, South Africa, are set in Precambrian dolomite rock, which was first laid down about 3800 million years ago, when Africa was still part of Gondwana. The caves are considered some of the oldest in the world. The Echo Caves are about 92km north of the similar Sudwala Caves. There are a number of speleothem structures in the cave; two of these are hollow stalactites which when hammered create echoes audible throughout and even outside the caves, thus the name of"
"Makapansgat in Limpopo Province, Cornelia and Florisbad in the Free State Province, Border Cave in KwaZulu-Natal Province, Klasies River Mouth in Eastern Cape Province and Pinnacle Point, Elandsfontein and Die Kelders Cave in Western Cape Province. These finds suggest that various hominid species existed in South Africa from about three million years ago, starting with ""Australopithecus africanus"". There followed species including ""Australopithecus sediba"", ""Homo ergaster"", ""Homo erectus"", ""Homo rhodesiensis"", ""Homo helmei"", ""Homo naledi"" and modern humans (""Homo sapiens""). Modern humans have inhabited Southern Africa for at least 170,000 years. Various researchers have located pebble tools within the Vaal River valley."
"from a series of caves near Krugersdorp and Mokopane in South Africa. The cave sites of Sterkfontein, Swartkrans, Kromdraai B, Drimolen, Malapa, Cooper's D, Gladysvale, Gondolin and Makapansgat have yielded a range of early human species dating back to between three and one million years ago, including ""Australopithecus africanus"", ""7Australopithecus sediba"" and ""Paranthropus robustus"". However, it is not generally thought that these early humans were living in the caves, but that they were brought into the caves by carnivores that had killed them. The first early hominid ever found in Africa, the Taung Child in 1924, was also thought for"
"site. Haasgat Haasgat is a fossiliferous South African paleocave located in the Cradle of Humankind UNESCO World Heritage Area, approx. northeast of the hominin-bearing sites of Sterkfontein and Swartkrans and approx. north-northwest of the City of Johannesburg. It is located on private land and is not accessible by the public. The cave system formed on the western slope of a narrow, north-south valley excised by a southeastern tributary of the Witwatersrandspruit River. As is the case with many of the dolomitic paleocaves in the region, the system was extensively mined for lime during the early 20th century. Although this mining"
"Haasgat Haasgat is a fossiliferous South African paleocave located in the Cradle of Humankind UNESCO World Heritage Area, approx. northeast of the hominin-bearing sites of Sterkfontein and Swartkrans and approx. north-northwest of the City of Johannesburg. It is located on private land and is not accessible by the public. The cave system formed on the western slope of a narrow, north-south valley excised by a southeastern tributary of the Witwatersrandspruit River. As is the case with many of the dolomitic paleocaves in the region, the system was extensively mined for lime during the early 20th century. Although this mining obliterated"
"by elevator, and is located within the Rhino and Lion Nature Reserve, in the Cradle of Humankind, a World Heritage Site. Wonder Cave (Kromdraai, Gauteng) The Wonder Cave, in Kromdraai, Gauteng, South Africa, is the third-largest cave chamber in the country, and is believed to be about 2.2 billion years old. The single chamber has an area of , and is . It was discovered in the late nineteenth century by miners who dynamited and excavated limestone for the making of cement. Mining stopped during the Second Boer War, and never resumed. The cave has about 14 stalactite and stalagmite"
"fossil bones, Dart concluded that these creatures, in an era before stone tools were discovered, used tools made from bone, teeth and horn, naming it the Osteodontokeratic Culture. In 1936, the Historical Monuments Commission was asked to declare Makapan's Cave a National Monument and Professor Clarence van Riet Lowe, Secretary of the commission and Director of the Archaeological Survey of the Union of South Africa, visited the site in 1937. He inspected the Historic Cave and discovered, close by, an abandoned limeworker’s adit that cut through a calcified cave infill. In this infill he saw fossil bones, stone tools, and"
"Wonder Cave (Kromdraai, Gauteng) The Wonder Cave, in Kromdraai, Gauteng, South Africa, is the third-largest cave chamber in the country, and is believed to be about 2.2 billion years old. The single chamber has an area of , and is . It was discovered in the late nineteenth century by miners who dynamited and excavated limestone for the making of cement. Mining stopped during the Second Boer War, and never resumed. The cave has about 14 stalactite and stalagmite formations up to 15 metres high, 85% of which are still growing. The 60 metre deep cave is accessible to visitors"
"Amboni Caves The Amboni Caves are the most extensive limestone caves in East Africa. They are located 8 km north of Tanga City in Tanzania off the Tanga-Mombasa road. The caves were formed about 150 million years ago during the Jurassic age. It covers an area of 234 km². According to researchers the area was under water some 20 million years ago. There are altogether ten caves but only one is used for guided tours. Amboni Limited, a company which was then operating sisal plantations in Tanga Region acquired the area in 1892. The company notified the British colonial government"
"Cango Caves The Cango Caves are located in Precambrian limestones at the foothills of the Swartberg range near the town of Oudtshoorn, in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. The principal cave is one of the country's finest, best known, and most popular tourist caves and attracts many visitors from overseas. Although the extensive system of tunnels and chambers go on for over , only about a quarter of this is open to visitors, who may proceed into the cave only in groups supervised by a guide. Cave paintings and artifacts indicate that the caves were in use throughout"
"Sterkfontein Sterkfontein (Afrikaans for ""Strong Spring"") is a set of limestone caves of special interest to paleo-anthropologists located in Gauteng province, about northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa in the Muldersdrift area close to the town of Krugersdorp. The archaeological sites of Swartkrans and Kromdraai are in the same area. Sterkfontein is a South African National Heritage Site and was also declared a World Heritage Site in 2000. The area in which it is situated is known as the Cradle of Humankind. The Sterkfontein Caves are also home to numerous wild African species including ""Belonogaster petiolata"", a wasp species of which"
"Lake Nyamasingiri. Many chimpanzees, red-tailed monkeys and Bates's pygmy antelopes can be found here. Maramagambo Forest Maramagambo Forest is located in Bushenyi, Uganda. It is part of the Queen Elizabeth National Park and is located in the southern part of the park. It is famously associated with its Bat Cave where a tourist from the Netherlands was exposed to Marburg virus present in the bats that live in the volcanic tube cave and developed Marburg virus disease. Following this outbreak, the cave was closed until the construction of a viewing platform with support from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control"
"Roedtan Roedtan is a small town in the Limpopo province, South Africa, set in the midst of the Springbok Flats. Roedtan has a rail road station from Polokwane. At the road junction to Roedtan stands a monument to the battle of Moordrift in 1854 when 33 Afrikaners were killed in a skirmish with the local tribe headed by Makapane. The cave, Makapansgat, is now known to record early hominid occupation (1,500,000 years ago) and is a national monument. The Springbok Flats is a reminder that great herds of Springbok once populated the plain, which was also frequented by lions and"
"a limestone cave renowned for its archaeological material located at Sterkfontein. A farm next to Sterkfontein named Swartkrans rich in archaeological material was purchased in 1968, and excavation rights were obtained for archaeological and palaeontological purposes at Makapansgat, located in Limpopo Province. The 1960s also witnessed widespread protest against apartheid policies. This resulted in numerous police invasions of campus to break up peaceful protests, as well as the banning, deportation and detention of many students and staff. Government funding for the university was cut, with funds originally meant for Wits often being channelled to the more conservative Afrikaans universities instead."
"Melkhoutboom Cave Melkhoutboom Cave is an archaeological site dating to the Later Stone Age, located in the Zuurberg Mountains, Cape Folded Mountain Belt, Sarah Baartman District Municipality in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Investigation of Melkhoutboom Cave and other sites in the Eastern Cape Province was spurred by earlier archaeological discoveries, including the discovery in the 1850s by Thomas Holden Bowker of a number of stone artifacts at the mouth of the Great Fish River, about southeast of the cave. John Hewitt, the director of the Albany Museum in Grahamstown from 1910 to 1958, excavated over twenty caves"
"eye color. Taforalt Taforalt or Grotte des Pigeons is a cave in northern Oujda, Morocco, and possibly the oldest cemetery in North Africa (Humphrey ""et al."" 2012). It contained at least 34 Iberomaurusian adolescent and adult human skeletons, as well as younger ones, from the Upper Palaeolithic between 15,100 and 14,000 calendar years ago. There is archaeological evidence for Iberomaurusian occupation at the site between 22,100 and 12,600 calendar years ago, as well as evidence for Aterian occupation as old as 85,000 years. La Grotte des Pigeons is a cave in eastern Morocco near the village of Taforalt. Human occupation"
"other wild animals. Roedtan Roedtan is a small town in the Limpopo province, South Africa, set in the midst of the Springbok Flats. Roedtan has a rail road station from Polokwane. At the road junction to Roedtan stands a monument to the battle of Moordrift in 1854 when 33 Afrikaners were killed in a skirmish with the local tribe headed by Makapane. The cave, Makapansgat, is now known to record early hominid occupation (1,500,000 years ago) and is a national monument. The Springbok Flats is a reminder that great herds of Springbok once populated the plain, which was also frequented"
"Voortrekkers, notably in the area that would later become the Northern Transvaal. In September 1854, 28 Boers accused of cattle rustling were killed in three separate incidents by an alliance of the Ndebele chiefdoms of Mokopane and Mankopane. Mokopane and his followers, anticipating retaliation by the settlers, retreated into the mountain caves known as Gwasa, (or Makapansgat in Afrikaans). In late October, Boer commandos supported by local Kgatla tribal collaborators laid siege to the caves. By the end of the siege, about three weeks later, Mokopane and between 1,000 and 3,000 people had died in the caves. The survivors were"
"harvest from being plundered. The Konkomba, Moba, and Mamprussi are among the peoples are believed to be the builders of the cave structures. This site was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List on December 12, 2000 in the Cultural category. Still intact upon discovery, the caves contained many specimens of bows, arrows, and quivers. Nok and Mamproug Cave Dwellings Located in the Tandjouaré Prefecture in the Savanes Region of northern Togo, Africa, the caves of Nôk and Mamproug contain shelter and refuge structures built between the 17th and 19th centuries mainly for defensive purposes. In total, the caves"
"Bay Nature Reserve, next to De Kelders, the residential shore area of Gansbaai. As one of only three places in South Africa where such old remains have been excavated, Klipgat Cave is one of the most important historical sites in the Western Cape. The reserve and the cave are open to the public. The earliest evidence of the presence of sheep-herding Khoi people (after the hunter-gatherer-""San"", the original indigenous population of the Western Cape) in the Western Cape has been found in Klipgat Cave as well. Until the arrival of the first white settlers at the end of the 18th"
"Kef Toghobeit Cave Kef Toghobeit is a karst cave near the settlement of Bab Taza in Chefchaouen Province, Tanger-Tetouan-Al Hoceima, in northern Morocco. Currently known to be long and deep, it is the deepest cave in Morocco, and the third deepest cave in Africa. Although Kef Toghobeit has been well-explored, its full extent is not yet known. Indeed, the karst topography of the Rif mountain range where the cave begins has barely been mapped - just 1000 caves are known in Morocco, and the geology would suggest that more than this exist. Kef Toghobeit is just one of over a"
"Motsetsi Motsetsi Cave (also known as Motsetse) is a fossil-bearing breccia filled cavity located about east of the well known South African hominid-bearing sites of Sterkfontein and Kromdraai and about north-northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa. Motsetsi has been declared a South African National Heritage Site. Motsetsi has been investigated since its discovery by Lee Berger in 1999. Since then a series of part-time excavations have recovered tens of thousands of fossils. Excavations have been conducted at Motsetse by the University of the Witwatersrand and at times in conjunction with Peter Schmid of the University of Zurich. Only a very small"
"where conditions allowed for the formation and preservation of fossils. On 7 December 2005, South African President Thabo Mbeki opened the new Maropeng Visitors Centre at the site. Cradle of Humankind The Cradle of Humankind is a paleoanthropological site about northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa, in the Gauteng province. Declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1999, the site currently occupies and contains a complex of limestone caves. The registered name of the site in the list of World Heritage sites is ""Fossil Hominid Sites of South Africa"". The Sterkfontein Caves were the site of the discovery of a"
"Sudwala Caves The Sudwala Caves in Mpumalanga, South Africa, are set in Precambrian dolomite rock, which was first laid down about 2800 million years ago, when Africa was still part of Gondwana. The caves themselves formed about 240 million years ago. There are a number of speleothem structures in the cave, known by names such as the ""Lowveld Rocket"", ""Samson's Pillar"", and the ""Screaming Monster""; some have been dated to 200 million years old. There are also microbial fossils of a cyanobacterium known as ""collenia"" in the rock; these formed 2000 million years ago. The caves were used for shelter"
"Taforalt Taforalt or Grotte des Pigeons is a cave in northern Oujda, Morocco, and possibly the oldest cemetery in North Africa (Humphrey ""et al."" 2012). It contained at least 34 Iberomaurusian adolescent and adult human skeletons, as well as younger ones, from the Upper Palaeolithic between 15,100 and 14,000 calendar years ago. There is archaeological evidence for Iberomaurusian occupation at the site between 22,100 and 12,600 calendar years ago, as well as evidence for Aterian occupation as old as 85,000 years. La Grotte des Pigeons is a cave in eastern Morocco near the village of Taforalt. Human occupation and natural"
"is the Main Caves, with one of the best known rock-art sites in South Africa Giant's Castle Giant's Castle is a mountain peak in the southern African Drakensberg in KwaZulu Natal. Giants Castle offers visitors to the regions hiking opportunities with panoramic views. The Nature Reserve offers secluded accommodation, bushman rock art with easy access for everyone and about the best base to start a Drakensberg hiking experience. The area is one of many of South Africa's adventure areas, and plays host to the Giants Challenge marathon in April each year. Lying at the southern end of the central Drakensberg"
"the original cave entrance and parts of the system, the miners largely followed the original contours of the system. As a result, Haasgat is somewhat unusual in maintaining both the original roof and parietal contours, as well as remnant fossiliferous bands of calcified sediments throughout the ~100m long tunnel that comprises the modern cave. While Haasgat was long known to residents of the Kalkheuvel West region (who named the cave Haasgat [""Afrikaans: hare hole""] after a resident red rock hare), the system was first mapped during a survey of regional caves by Martini and Keyser in 1987. The extensive ""ex"
"The Ranch Resort The Ranch Resort is a family-owned leisure, sports, exhibition, conservation, accommodation and conferencing centre within the Ranch Conservancy located in the Capricorn District of the Limpopo Province, south of Polokwane - the capital city of the Limpopo Province - in South Africa. It is adjacent to the Makapansgat Valley, an archaeologically significant area that has produced fossils and bones that signify early hominid presence in Limpopo and forms part of Gauteng’s Cradle of Humankind World Heritage site. A 12-hole par 3 - Executive Golf Course was officially opened in May 2010 by the Premier of Limpopo Province,"
"new tribal offices were officially opened. Kamatsamo KaMatsamo, previously known as Schoemansdal, is a town in the province of Mpumalanga (eastern Transvaal) in South Africa. It is located 23 kilometres south of Malalane. During the period when the policies of separate development were implemented under the apartheid regime, Schoemansdal was the capital of the bantustan named KaNgwane. In November 2005 the South African government announced that the town's name had been changed to KaMatsamo. The new name is in honor of prince Matsamo Shongwe.Swazi Shongwe Matsamo Tribe. According to tradition, the Shongwe Matsamo were an independent tribe originated from a"
"Boesmansgat Boesmansgat, also known in English as ""Bushman's Hole"", is a deep submerged freshwater cave (or sinkhole) in the Northern Cape province of South Africa, which has been dived to a depth of . Boesmansgat was believed to have first been explored by amateur diver Mike Rathbourne, in 1977. The greatest depth attained was by Nuno Gomes, in 1996. Its altitude of over makes this a particularly challenging dive, requiring a decompression schedule equivalent for a dive to at sea level. (Gomes' dive was a close call, as he got stuck in the mud on the bottom of Bushman's Hole"
"Malapa Fossil Site, Cradle of Humankind Malapa is a fossil-bearing cave located about northeast of the well known South African hominid-bearing sites of Sterkfontein and Swartkrans and about north-northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa. It is situated within the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site. In March 2008, Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, undertook an exploration project in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage site outside of Johannesburg, in order to map the known caves identified by him and his colleagues over the past several decades, and to place known fossil sites onto Google Earth so"
"female. However, the question is not entirely settled, since other studies have come to the opposite conclusion. Some experts have suggested that a partial skeleton, known only by its catalogue number of STS 14, which was discovered in the same year, in the same geological deposit and in proximity to Mrs. Ples, may belong to this skull. If correct, this would make Mrs. Ples the South African counterpart to the famous Lucy fossil. This skull, along with others discovered at Taung, Sterkfontien, and Makapansgat offered compelling evidence in favour of Charles Darwin's hypothesis that humanity's origin lay in Africa. The"
"Kogelbeen Cave The Kogelbeen Cave forms part of eight caves on the dolomitic Ghaap plateau of the Northern Cape, South Africa. It is commonly known as Kogelbeengrotte by Afrikaans speaking community members. The cave is located on Kogelbeen Farm in Pixley ka Seme District Municipality. It is the longest known cave in the Northern Cape with a length of 788 meters. The Kogelbeen Cave has a diverse fauna with over 39 species living in five life zones within the cave. The cave was first described in speleological literature in 1964. The cave is classified as a South African Natural Heritage"