Welcome Home!

Today was the day to visit our roots. As one of the guides said, “welcome home”. (Does this lady have any resemblance to anyone in our families?)
We visited the Cradle of Humankind, one of the World Heritage sites because it is one of the most prolific paleontological sites in the world, where the oldest known remains of man have been found. In the morning we visited Sterkfontein Caves, the place where Dr. Robert Broom discovered Mrs. Ples (who may or may not have been a woman) , the first known adult cranium of an ape man dating back 2.5 million years old. We went down in a cave and saw where the excavations have taken place (from a distance). American liability lawyers would have a field day in this place. We crawled, we ducked and we slid on our butts as we made our way through the cave, which had some lighting and minimal (often no) handrails. It is hard to believe that the men who found these remains have worked diligently for 20 years now, to extract the remains from the rock in which they are embedded. There are 13 paleontological sites that sites that comprise the Cradle of Humankind site- we saw two. In 2003 a team of scientists used a new dating method and placed the age of Little foot at 4.16 million years old. It is very controversial in the scientific community.

Then we went to Miromeng, another heritage site. It had an outstanding interactive museum where we could looks at the fossilized dinosaur eggs and various tools that have been found.

There was frost on the ground in South Africa this morning, but the day warmed up and it is really quite nice. Tonight we have an awards dinner to attend (hard to believe a group of geologists are being asked to wear coats and ties two nights in a row). It doesn’t start until 8 p.m. – when I usually am sound asleep. Hopefully this will be different and no bore us to tears.