<< Our Photo Pages >> Border Cave - Cave or Rock Shelter in South Africa
Submitted by bat400 on Wednesday, 26 September 2012 Page Views: 5241
Natural PlacesSite Name: Border CaveCountry: South Africa Type: Cave or Rock Shelter
Nearest Town: Pongola Nearest Village: KwaNonjinjikazi
Latitude: 27.02S Longitude: 31.988000E
Condition:
5 | Perfect |
4 | Almost Perfect |
3 | Reasonable but with some damage |
2 | Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site |
1 | Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks |
0 | No data. |
-1 | Completely destroyed |
5 | Superb |
4 | Good |
3 | Ordinary |
2 | Not Good |
1 | Awful |
0 | No data. |
5 | Can be driven to, probably with disabled access |
4 | Short walk on a footpath |
3 | Requiring a bit more of a walk |
2 | A long walk |
1 | In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find |
0 | No data. |
5 | co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates |
4 | co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map |
3 | co-ordinates scaled from a bad map |
2 | co-ordinates of the nearest village |
1 | co-ordinates of the nearest town |
0 | no data |
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Located in the Lebombo Mountains near the border between South Africa and Swaziland. Anatomically modern Homo sapiens skeletons and stone tools and knapping debris have been recovered. A set of tools almost identical to that used by the modern San people and dating to 44,000 BP were discovered at the cave in 2012. These represent the earliest unambiguous evidence for modern human behaviour, including specialized tool manufacture, hunting tactics, personal adornment, and notation.
The rock shelter is semi-circular in horizontal section, some 40 m across, and formed in Jurassic lavas as a result of differential weathering. Dating by C-14, amino acid racemisation and electron spin resonance places the oldest sedimentary ash at some 200,000 years ago.
Human bone fragments found in 1940 were recognised as extremely old, but In 1941 - 42 a team (University of the Witwatersrand) carried out a thorough survey. Later excavations in the 1970s by Beaumont were rewarded with rich yields, including the complete skeleton of an infant and remains of five adult hominins. Also recovered were more than 69,000 artifacts, and the remains of dozens of animal species showing that its early inhabitants ate bushpig, warthog, zebra and buffalo among others. Raw materials used in the making tools, beads and other artifacts include chert, rhyolite, quartz, and chalcedony, as well as bone, wood and ostrich egg shells.
Amafa Heritage/KwaZulu-Natal runs an Interpretive Center and an overnight camp below the site. Guides can take visitors up the hillside to the mouth of the rock shelter.
Ref:
Border Cave (South Africa), from About.com Archaeology.
Border Cave, Wikipedia.
Border Cave, Amafa Heritage/KwaZulu-Natal website.
Note: A Modern Culture Emerged 44,000 Years Ago. Later Stone Age emerged in South Africa more than 20,000 years earlier than previously believed -- coinciding with the time when humans were migrating from Africa to the European continent.
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