Critical Windows Into Early Human Evolution Recognized as UNESCO World Heritage Sites

South African caves, cardinal to discoveries that shaped technological knowing of aboriginal quality behavior, person been designated arsenic a World Heritage Site.

The 3 caller additions to the Heritage list, finalized connected July 26, see Diepkloof Rock Shelter, Sibhudu Cave, and the Pinnacle Point Site Complex. The second has been extensively explored and documented by Arizona State University prof Curtis Marean, who was instrumental successful the propulsion for UNESCO recognition.

When Marean archetypal began his enactment astatine Pinnacle Point successful 1999, the caves astatine the basal of a 164-foot-tall (50 meters) cliff located connected the Indian Ocean seashore had not yet been excavated. Among the discoveries that Marean has documented are signs of however Homo sapiens lived astir 160,000 years ago, during an epoch known arsenic the Quaternary, arsenic humans were spreading passim the African continent. Marean recovered grounds that these humans ate shellfish, modified and utilized pigments, and utilized fire to modify earthy materials. The tract besides contained the earliest signs of humans utilizing precocious projectile weapons, dating backmost 71,000 years.

“Pinnacle Point has proven to beryllium an unthinkable penetration into the root of our species—particularly our narration with the sea,” said Ryan Williams, manager of Arizona State University’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change successful a press release.

The 3 sites successful South Africa’s Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces were recognized owed to their contributions “to the knowing of the root of behaviourally modern humans, their cognitive abilities and cultures, and the climatic transitions that they survived,” UNESCO said connected its website. Sites are lone added to the database if they are deemed to person “outstanding worth to humanity.”

Pinnacle Point is besides important for the clues it contains to however aboriginal humans survived a shifting climate, including the question of monolithic crystal sheets during the Quaternary Era, and the supereruption of Mt. Toba, a volcano located successful modern-day Indonesia, 74,000 years ago.

“This momentous juncture marks a important milestone successful our corporate travel to sphere and observe the origins of modern quality behaviour and our shared taste heritage,” said Western Cape Provincial Minister of Cultural Affairs and Sport Ricardo Mackenzie successful a statement. “The exceptional preservation of these sites, amidst the challenges of clime alteration and rising oversea levels, basal arsenic testaments to our ancestors’ resilience, ingenuity, and adaptation to biology changes.”