1-Day Cradle of Humankind Tour

Guests are met at any location of their choice in Johannesburg or Pretoria, where we make our way to the Cradle of Humankind. This approximately 47,000-hectare area lies about 50 km northwest of Johannesburg and forms part of the UNESCO-listed Fossil Hominid Sites of South Africa. The region became globally prominent in April 1947 when Dr Robert Broom (with John T. Robinson) uncovered the famous “Mrs Ples” fossil at Sterkfontein, one of the best-known cave sites in the area. Your guide introduces the landscape, key discovery sites, and why the Cradle holds an exceptional concentration of early hominin finds.

Lime miners first blasted into Sterkfontein in 1896, and the dumps of fossil-bearing rock they left behind drew scientists to the site. Robert Broom received its first adult Australopithecus africanus fossil from the quarry manager in August 1936, eleven years before his best-known find. Mrs Ples was exposed by a dynamite blast in April 1947 that broke the skull in two, and estimates of her age range from about 2 to 3 million years. The original is kept at the Ditsong National Museum of Natural History in Pretoria.

In 1994 Ron Clarke noticed four foot bones among material from a miner’s dump in the Silberberg Grotto. He went on to trace the rest of a nearly complete skeleton in the cave. Excavating and reconstructing Little Foot took more than 20 years, and the deposits around it have been dated to about 3.67 million years.

The day tour focuses on exploring the Sterkfontein Caves and the insightful Maropeng Visitor Centre, which provides museum-style context for human evolution and the discoveries made in the Cradle. Time is built in for interpretation, photos, and browsing exhibits, with the pace adjusted to your interests.

Maropeng, a Setswana word usually translated as returning to the place of origin, was opened by President Thabo Mbeki in December 2005. Its entrance is a grassed mound built to resemble an ancient burial tumulus. Inside, the exhibition starts with a boat ride past ice, water and fire, the forces that shaped the planet, before moving on to the story of early humans. The search is far from over: in 2013 cavers found the bones of a previously unknown species, Homo naledi, in the nearby Rising Star Cave, and it was announced in 2015.

In the late afternoon, the tour returns to Pretoria or Johannesburg, where guests are dropped off at any location of their choice.