MANAGING HERITAGE RESOURCES:
PINNACLE POINT ESTATE
You’ve probably heard all the hype about Maropeng and the Cradle of Humankind, but
there is a lot more to it than the tourism marketers make out. South Africa has quite
possibly the richest fossil and archaeological record in the world – from the earliest known
living organisms to dinosaurs, ancient mammals, human ancestors and early anatomically
modern humans.
There is rock art in the mountains, and all over the Karoo, significant heritage resources – mostly in coastal caves.
and coastal caves shelter the evidence of human occupation Because they were not on the land that was actually
going back hundreds of thousands of years – including what to be built on, the developers put this knowledge ‘on
may well be the very first artworks and tools in the world. the back burner’ – something to be dealt with later. But
Even what appear to be natural accumulations of shells on the then, soon after construction of the golf course, it was
open beaches may turn out to be priceless records of human found that the irrigation water was percolating through
occupation. There is so much. the ground and into one of the caves. T