Swartkraans, the read-head stepchild in the cradle...
This cave doesn't get too much mention even though its only a couple of hundred meters from sterkfontein caves.
It's important because many fossil discoveries have been made here.
Broom was a regular digger and the cave has turned out to be particularly rich in hominin remains. it also has some very early uses of fire by human ancestry at 1.5 million years ago.
From the fossils discovered here it has been demonstrated that many of them were the victims of big cat depredation in the form of leopards and this saber tooth variety Megantereon
By Ghedoghedo , CC BY-SA 4.0, Link
Homo habilis, amoungst the earliest of tool makers is present with the Oldowan technology.
Homo ergaster, the African equivalent of homo erectus is found here too and many of the tools from the surrounding areas are associated with this species. These are inherited and refined from the Oldowan tech. It's from Ergaster that we start to get beautiful handaxes in abundance.
The surrounding areas are littered with millions if not billions of them. I have examined tonnes of both the Oldowan and Acheulean material from these areas, having grown up there.
I must say that I've never heard of this cave. You've given me my research topic for the evening. Thank you!
It's still actively under excavation and you can pay to join in the fun... or just take a in-depth small group tour
Very Interesting , Hard to tell what you could find in there!
That would be fascinating
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Are you an archaeologist? So this place is in South Africa..I looked it up :) Finding these tools must take such a trained "eye" to see....they would just look like a piece of rock to me. How do you know when you've found the real thing? and what's what...they both kind of look the same.
It helps to know what regular rocks look like... then the ones that have been "tampered with" stand out like a sore thumb...
That makes sense.
From the looks of it, I would not want to encounter one of these megantereon, I mean...look at those teeth!
I couldn't agree more... In this case extinction is a good thing.