Qualla: Cradle of Humankind https://qualla.com/cradle-of-humankind en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:25 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Cradle of Humankind https://qualla.com/cradle-of-humankind Cradle of Humankind: Introduction https://qualla.com/cradle-of-humankind/ In 1947, paleontologist Robert Broom and his colleague John T. Robinson extracted a 2.3-million-year-old skull from the limestone of Sterkfontein Cave, northwest of Johannesburg. They nicknamed her "Mrs. Ples" -- a compressed Australopithecus africanus cranium that became one of the most famous fossils in the world. She was not the first major find from these caves, and she would be far from the last. The rolling grasslands of the Gauteng province conceal a labyrinth of dolomitic caves that have been trapping, preserving, and yielding up the bones of our ancestors for longer than the human species has existed. The site's formal name -- Fossil Hominid Sites of South Africa -- is clinical. Everyone calls it the Cradle of Humankind.

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]]> Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/e/7/s/cradle-of-humankind-wp/ke7s-cradle-of-humankind-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Cradle of Humankind: Limestone Traps, Deep Time https://qualla.com/cradle-of-humankind/ The Cradle occupies 47,000 hectares of grassland and bush about 50 kilometers northwest of Johannesburg. Beneath the surface lies a complex system of limestone caves formed in ancient dolomite rock, where natural shafts and fissures have been capturing animal and hominin remains ...

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]]> Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/e/7/s/cradle-of-humankind-wp/ke7s-cradle-of-humankind-limestone-traps-deep-time.mp3 0:06 2 full Cradle of Humankind: A Century of Revelations https://qualla.com/cradle-of-humankind/ Robert Broom began finding hominin fossils at Sterkfontein in 1935, building on Raymond Dart's 1924 discovery of the juvenile Australopithecus africanus skull -- the "Taung Child" -- found 300 kilometers to the southwest. In 1938, a schoolboy named Gert Terrblanche brought Dart s...

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]]> Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/e/7/s/cradle-of-humankind-wp/ke7s-cradle-of-humankind-a-century-of-revelations.mp3 0:06 3 full Cradle of Humankind: The Chamber of Stars https://qualla.com/cradle-of-humankind/ In October 2013, cavers Rick Hunter and Steven Tucker squeezed through a narrow chute in the Rising Star Cave system, near Swartkrans, and found a chamber littered with hominin bones. Paleoanthropologist Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand organized an expedition th...

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]]> Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/e/7/s/cradle-of-humankind-wp/ke7s-cradle-of-humankind-the-chamber-of-stars.mp3 0:06 4 full Cradle of Humankind: What Homo Naledi Means https://qualla.com/cradle-of-humankind/ Homo naledi complicated the story of human evolution in ways that researchers are still absorbing. The species had a brain roughly a third the size of a modern human's, yet appears to have deliberately deposited its dead in the remote Dinaledi Chamber -- a behavior previously tho...

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]]> Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/e/7/s/cradle-of-humankind-wp/ke7s-cradle-of-humankind-what-homo-naledi-means.mp3 0:06 5 full Cradle of Humankind: Walking Where It All Began https://qualla.com/cradle-of-humankind/ The Maropeng Visitors Centre, opened by President Thabo Mbeki in December 2005, sits at the surface of this deep-time archive. Visitors can see fossils, examine stone tools, and tour the Sterkfontein Caves where Mrs. Ples and Little Foot were found. A moveable steel structure cal...

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]]> Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/e/7/s/cradle-of-humankind-wp/ke7s-cradle-of-humankind-walking-where-it-all-began.mp3 0:06 6 full