Paleo-tourism is the new buzzword after the discovery of the significance of ‘Little Foot’, report David Beresford and Eddie Koch
In an office tucked away in a corner of the University of the Witwatersrand, a professor who looks disconcertingly like Albert Einstein can be found dreaming of a new form of tourism — a grand tour of old bones on the dark continent.
Professor Philip Tobias is a scientist who has finally “come in from the cold”. After nearly half a century suffering the contempt meted out to South Africa over apartheid, he has found himself at the centre of international acclaim over the discovery of four bones in a forgotten box on the campus.
The bones, dug up 17 years ago at Sterkfontein Caves, throw dramatic new light on human evolution — indicating that early man was a chimpanzee-like tree- climber. The remains, of a person now known as “Little Foot”, show that about 3,5-million years ago our ancestors had divergent, highly mobile toes capable of ape-like grasping movement.
The discovery is a major development, not only for paleo-anthropology, but for South African scientists ostracised for decades because of their government’s racist policies.
South Africa leapt to the forefront of evolutionary research 70 years ago when Professor Tobias’s predecessor as head of the department of anatomy at the university, Raymond Dart, discovered the original “missing link” — the Taung skull — at the same Sterkfontein caves.
But with apartheid, the country’s scientists fell victim to international ostracism, recovery from which has been signalled by the excitement over the now- celebrated Little Foot.
“There is no doubt that during the apartheid era, and the academic boycott, the work and the discoveries in South Africa tended to be overlooked,” says Tobias. “The spotlight was fiercely focused on Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia. South Africa’s historical contribution to the study of the evolution of man in Africa tended to be down-played.”
The “Little Foot” discovery is likely to be followed in a matter of weeks by further announcements by Wits of major breakthroughs in the study of human evolution.
In the race back through the mists of prehistory, South Africa has been overtaken since Professor Dart’s time by Kenya and Ethiopia, where hominid fossils have been found dating back more than four million years. As a result, those countries are now favourites to find the current “holy grail” of paleo-anthropology: the remains of the creature which, it is believed, existed before mankind split from the chimpanzee. Molecular research suggests such a creature existed between five and eight million years ago.
But South Africa’s eight major cave sites are making major strides in the consolidation of understanding as to how mankind evolved. Unlike the sites in North and East Africa, where the fossils tend to be scattered and damaged, the South African digs are in “sealed sites”, where bones are comparatively undamaged and together. Sterkfontein, it is suspected, originally formed a natural “trap”, a shaft into which people and animals fell, died and were preserved.
The international recognition given to the “Little Foot” discovery has prompted a new ambition in Professor Tobias, to develop what he calls “paleo- tourism”. “If we could work a deal with our pan-African chums, it could be a grand tour of the world’s greatest sites bearing on the evolution of man,” dreams the paleo-anthropologist who has finally come in from the cold.
Meanwhile, the National Parks Board has recently set up a “cultural conservation” desk. Media officer Rudolf van Graan says this reflects the increasing importance the organisation is attaching to archeological sites as an attraction for tourists. The new Vhembe/Dongola National Park, inaugurated in June along the banks of the Limpopo River, is more important for its archaeology than its wildlife.
Some scientists believe the Limpopo River Valley is the seat of sub-Saharan civilization. The area is a treasure trove of archaeological remains, gold artifacts, beads and burial grounds which indicate the civilization that found its apogee at Great Zimbabwe 500 years ago had its origins there.
‘South Africa has incredibly rich archaeological resources that could potentially be developed (for tourism). The extraordinary thing about these resources is that they range over the whole course of human existence, from the earliest fossil hominids through to historical and colonial periods. Moreover, important sites are distributed throughout the country,” says Andrew Sillen, associate professor of archeology at the University of Cape Town.
In Gauteng, Sterkfontein is an important site. However, South Africa has two other key sites which have been reported to contain the earliest Anatomically Modern Humans (that is, people indistinguishable from populations living today): Border Cave, on the border of KwaZulu/Natal and Swaziland, and Klasies River Mouth, near the beautiful Tzitzikamma Reserve on the Cape coast. The evidence here indicates modern humans first appeared in southern Africa at a time when Europe and the Middle East were still populated by Neanderthals, says Sillen.