Fossil Hominid Sites of South Africa

Humanity's deep past surfaces in the caves of South Africa. In this fossil landscape — including the Sterkfontein area often called the Cradle of Humankind, the Taung site where the famous Australopithecus africanus skull emerged in 1924, and the Makapan Valley with traces reaching back some 3.3 million years — scientists have recovered early hominids such as Paranthropus and evidence of fire use up to 1.8 million years old. UNESCO first inscribed the sites in 1999.