Cradle of Humankind (Half Day) CHKHD

This half-day tour of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site takes you on a journey through time starting with the formation of the planet and moving all the way through the evolutionary processes that culminated in the world as we know it today. Of course, you will be meeting our famous ancestors - Mrs. Ples, Little Foot, and Sediba - along the way. Facilitating this journey are the Maropeng Visitor Centre and the Sterkfontein Caves, the latter being the site of the longest continuous anthropological dig in the world.  Your half-day tour ends with lunch.

You will be met at your hotel by your tour representative and taken to the Cradle of Humankind, a World Heritage Site which widely recognizes Africa as the place from where all of humankind originated. Here you will see some of the oldest hominid fossils ever found dating back more than 3 million years. Hominids are the ancestors of modern humans who first emerged about seven million years ago in Africa. The Maropeng Visitor Center, on the Cradle of Humankind site, is housed in a massive burial mound and contains hundreds of interactive, educational, and entertaining exhibits. There is a boat ride on an underground lake which is part of your tour. The entire site currently occupies 47,000 hectares (180 sq mi) and contains a complex of limestone caves. Then you take a short journey down the road to the Sterkfontein Caves, one of the world’s richest hominid fossil sites and, also the site of the longest continuous anthropological dig in the world with excavations that began in 1935. You will journey deep under the earth to the place where the remains of some of our oldest ancestors have been discovered. Your half-day tour ends with lunch at your hotel.

• Be sure to wear comfortable shoes. The cave tour is not suitable for people who suffer from claustrophobia and, due to the terrain in the caves, the tour is regrettably not wheelchair friendly.