Caves of South Africa/Groot van Suid Afrika.

• The main object of this project is to try and get the beauty of South Africa and the numerous people on Geni to be added to this category.
• South Africa have a hugh amount of these world wonders and working through family profiles just created the awareness of what a wonderful country South Africans are living in.
• The caves will be in alphabetic order and all users are free to add profiles to this project.
• Die hoofdoel van die projek is om die wonderlike skoonheid van Suid Afrika en sy wonderlike natuurwonders te illustreer.
• Soos daar deur profiele gewerk word, word die hoeveelheid profiele wat op een of ander tyd die plaas waar die grot op is besit het en begrawe is.
• Die grotte is in alfabatiese order en voel asseblief vry of enige profiele by die projek te plaas soos U aangaan.
• Die grotte sal in alfabetiese volgorde geplaas word en alle gebruikers word genooi om aan die projek deel te neem.
• Soos ek vandag deur my familie navorsing gewerk het, was ek verbaas hoeveel oorsese “Guru’s deel was van die ontdekkings van die grotte. • List of caves in South Africa

B

• Blombos Cave

• Blombos Cave is an archaeological site located in Blombosfontein Nature Reserve, about 300 km east of Cape Town on the Southern Cape coastline, South Africa. The cave contains Middle Stone Age deposits currently dated at between c. 100,000 and 70,000 years before present (BP), and a Late Stone Age sequence dated at between 2000 and 300 years BP.[1][2][3][4] The cave site was first excavated in 1991 and field work has been conducted there on a regular basis since 1997 – and is ongoing.[5]

The excavations at Blombos Cave have yielded important new information on the behavioural evolution of our species, Homo sapiens. The archaeological record from this cave site has been central in the ongoing debate on the cognitive and cultural origin of early humans and to the current understanding of when and where key behavioural innovations emerged among Homo sapiens in southern Africa during the Late Pleistocene.[6][7][8] Archaeological material and faunal remains recovered from the Middle Stone Age phase in Blombos Cave – dated to ca. 100,000–70,000 years BP – are considered to represent greater ecological niche adaptation, a more diverse set of subsistence and procurements strategies, adoption of multi-step technology and manufacture of composite tools, stylistic elaboration, increased economic and social organisation and occurrence of symbolically mediated behaviour.

The most informative archaeological material from Blombos Cave includes engraved ochre, engraved bone ochre processing kits, marine shell beads, refined bone and stone tools and a broad range of terrestrial and marine faunal remains, including shellfish, birds, tortoise and ostrich egg shell and mammals of various sizes. These findings, together with subsequent re-analysis and excavation of other Middle Stone Age sites in southern Africa, have resulted in a paradigm shift with regards to our understanding of the timing and location of the development of modern human behaviour http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blombos_Cave

• Boesmansgat

• Boesmansgat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boesmansgat Boesmansgat, also known in English as Bushman's Hole, is believed to be the sixth-deepest submerged freshwater cave (or sinkhole) in the world, having been dived to 282.6 metres (927 ft). It is located in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. Boesmansgat was believed to be first explored by amateur diver Mike Rathbourne in 1977

The lowest depth attained was by  '''Nuno Gomes in 1996.'''

Being at an altitude of over 1,500 metres (4,900 ft) this was a particularly challenging dive, requiring a decompression schedule equivalent for a dive to 339 metres (1,112 ft) feet at sea level.

On 24 November 2004, '''Verna van Schaik'''

set the 

Guinness Woman's World Record

for the deepest dive with a dive to 221 metres (725 ft).

• Deaths Eben Leyden

died in 1993 after blacking out at 60 metres (200 ft).

In 1994, while helping a team prepare for a dive,  '''Deon Dreyer''' died on ascent at a depth of 50 metres (160 ft).

Dreyer's body remained in the cave until being discovered ten years later at a depth of 270 metres (890 ft) by renowned cave diver '''David Shaw'''

• On 8 January 2005 an attempt made by Shaw to recover the body resulted in his death, and nearly claimed the life of support diver Don Shirley
• The bodies of Dreyer and Shaw were ultimately recovered on 12 January 2005, while part of the staff was recovering part of the technical equipment.

# In literature

The death of the parents of one of the protagonists while diving in Bushman's Hole is an important plot device in Mo Hayder's novel Ritual.

==C== • Cango Caves The Cango Caves are located in Precambrian limestones at the foothills of the Swartberg range near the town of Oudtshoorn, in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. The principal cave is one of the country's finest, best known, and most popular tourist caves, and attracts many visitors from overseas. Although the extensive system of tunnels and chambers go on for over four kilometers, only about a quarter of this is open to visitors, who may proceed into the cave only in groups supervised by a guide. Tours are conducted at regular intervals on most days—there is a "Standard Tour" which takes an hour and an "Adventure Tour" which takes an hour and a half. The "Adventure Tour" consists of crawling through narrow passages and climbing up steep rock formations guided by small lights. The caves contain halls and limestone formations (on both tours) as well as small passages on the Adventure Tour. The smallest passage that tourists will have to pass through on the Adventure Tour is just under 15cm to exit. The caves are considered to be part of the R62 road http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cango_Caves

• Coopers Cave Cooper's Cave is a series of fossil-bearing breccia filled cavities. The cave is located almost exactly between the well known South African hominid-bearing sites of Sterkfontein and Kromdraai and about 40 km Northwest of the City of Johannesburg, South Africa and has been declared a South African National Heritage Site.

* History of investigations

Cooper's Cave is now recognised as the fifth richest hominid site in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site (behind Sterkfontein, Swartkrans, Drimolen and Kromdraai) and one of the richest sites for early hominid stone tools of the Developed Olduwan culture.Excavations are still underway at Cooper's and are currently being directed by Christine Steininger and Lee Berger of the Institute for Human Evolution and the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research at the University of the Witwatersrand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coopers_Cave#

==D==

• Diepkloof Rock Shelter

1. Diepkloof Rock Shelter is a rock shelter in Western Cape, South Africa in which has been found some of the earliest evidence of the human use of symbols, in the form of patterns engraved upon ostrich eggshell water containers. These date around 60,000 years ago.

The symbolic patterns consist of lines crossed at right angles or oblique angles by hatching. It has been suggested that "by the repetition of this motif, early humans were trying to communicate something. Perhaps they were trying to express the identity of the individual or the group."

• Site description

The cave is about 17 kilometres (11 mi) from the shoreline of the Atlantic in a semi-arid area, near Elands Bay about 150 kilometres (93 mi) north of Cape Town. It occurs in quartzitic sandstone in a butte that overlooks in an east direction 100 metres (330 ft) above the Verlorenvlei River. It contains one of "most complete and continuous later Middle Stone Age sequences in southern Africa" stretching from before 130,000 BP to about 45,000 BP and encompassing pre-Stillbay, ''Stillbay'' ''Howiesons Poort'' and post-Howiesons Poort periods.

• It is about 25 metres (82 ft) wide and 15 metres (49 ft) deep.
• Research is based upon finds discovered in a trench excavated within it that is 16 metres (52 ft) across and 3.6 metres (12 ft) in depth. The deposits consist of burnt and nonburnt organic residues and ash that came from hearths, ash dumps and burnt bedding.

It was first excavated in 1973 by '''John Parkington''' and '''Cedric Poggenpoel'''

• Since 1999 it has been researched in a collaboration between the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cape Town and the Institute of Prehistory and Quaternary Geology at the University of Bordeaux.

At Diepkloof Rock Shelter (DRS), from 70-74 ka bifaces and bifacial points are present while less complex forms such as backed artifacts occur from 70 ka through 60 ka and are subsequently replaced with unifacial points. Quartz and quartzite predominate the earliest unit with few occurrences of silcrete. During 70-74 ka unit, silcrete has replaced quartz while quartzite is still fairly dominant. From 65-70 ka quartz becomes dominant again with quartzite also being present.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diepkloof_Rock_Shelter

G

• Gladysvale Cave Gladysvale Cave, is a fossil-bearing breccia filled cave located about 13 km Northeast of the well known South African hominid-bearing sites of Sterkfontein and Swartkrans and about 45 km North-Northwest of the City of Johannesburg, South Africa. It is situated within the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site and is itself a South African National Heritage Site. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladysvale_Cave

• Gondolin Cave Gondolin Cave is a fossiliferous dolomitic paleocave system in the Northwest Province, South Africa. The paleocave formed in the Eccles Formation dolomites (Malmani Sub-group, Chuniespoort Group carbonate-Bif Marine Platform). Gondolin is currently the only described hominin-bearing fossil site in the Northwest Province-portion of the designated Cradle of Humankind UNESCO World Heritage Site. The cave is located on privately owned land and is not accessible to the public. As is the case with other South African paleocave systems with Pliocene and/or Pleistocene fossil deposits, the system was mined for lime during the early 20th century. As a result, the system has been heavily disturbed and consists of only a small active cave, a series of in situ remnant cave deposits, and extensive dumpsites of ex situ calcified sediments produced during mining activities. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondolin_Cave

H

• Haasgat

• Haasgat is a fossiliferous South African paleocave located in the Cradle of Humankind UNESCO World Heritage Area, approx. 20 kilometres (12 mi) northeast of the hominin-bearing sites of Sterkfontein and Swartkrans and ~ 60 kilometres (37 mi) north-northwest of the City of Johannesburg. It is located on private land and is not accessible by the public. The cave system formed on the western slope of a narrow, north-south valley excised by a southeastern tributary of the Witwatersrandspruit River. As is the case with many of the dolomitic paleocaves in the region, the system was extensively mined for lime during the early 20th century. Although this mining obliterated the original cave entrance and parts of the system, the miners largely followed the original contours of the system. As a result, Haasgat is somewhat unique in maintaining both the original roof and parietal contours, as well as remnant fossiliferous bands of calcified sediments throughout the ~100m long tunnel that comprises the modern cave. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haasgat

• Hoedjiespunt

• Hoedjiespunt is a Middle Pleistocene aged hominid fossil-bearing site on the West coast of South Africa, near the town of Saldanha Bay. The site is an ancient Brown Hyena lair dug into the side of a sand dune, located on a peninsula overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. The site became fossilized under a large calcrete formation around 280,000 years ago, at which time it was likely several kilometers from the ocean. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoedjiespunt
• Howieson’s Poort

1. Howieson’s Poort Shelter is a small rock shelter in South Africa containing the archeological site from which the Howiesons Poort period in the Middle Stone Age gets its name.
2. This period lasted around 5,000 years, between roughly 65,800 BP and 59,500 BP. This period is important as it, together with the Stillbay period 7,000 years earlier, provides the first evidence of human symbolism and technological skills that were later to appear in the Upper Paleolithic.

• Description

The rock shelter occurs in a hill on the north side of the Howieson's Poort containing the main road into '''Grahamstown from Port Elizabeth''' The cave is halfway up a cliff and is 7 metres (23 ft) deep and 5.5 metres (18 ft) wide at the mouth, with a large Real Yellowwood tree growing in the deposit and “bent horizontal with the floor to allow its branches to spread into the open at the mouth of the shelter”. The original Howiesons Poort period remains were covered very slowly due to the cave’s position halfway up the cliff and to wind clearance. 20000 years ago, however, a rock fall acted to protect the deposits near the front from wind erosion.

1. Excavation

It was excavated in the late 1920s, and then again in 1965 by '''Hilary and Janette Deacon''' There are very little in situ deposits left.

All the artifacts at the Howieson’s Poort site were found below a barren layer about a foot thick in a black layer also about a foot thick. The stone tools were mostly large segments or 'crescents', obliquely backed blades and unifacial and bifacial points. There are no rock paintings, nor bone or shell artifacts, though bone and shell artifacts are found in the deposits elsewhere of the Howiesons Poort period. Stone tools similar to those in the cave have been collected from hillsides above the rock shelter.

Originally, and until the mid-1970s, the remains at Howiesons Poort Shelter were thought to belong to the Magosian period and so intermediate in time and technology between the Middle Stone Age and Late Stone Age. However, optically stimulated luminescence dating pushed back dates for occupation by this period to 65,800 BP and 59,500 BP

Apart from the Howiesons Poort period, the cave was occupied for several very short periods, around 18-19000 BP, 9-10000 BP and 3-4000 BP, by people who made fires but left few or no artefacts.

1. Naming The poort was named after a Mr Howison but it was misspelt by Stapleton and Hewitt as Howiesonand their error has been used ever since for the stone tool industry named after it.[3][9] Note the site is always spelled with an apostrophe but the period can be spelt variably with and without http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howieson%E2%80%99s_Poort_Shelter

K

• Klasies River Caves • Kromdraai fossil site

M

• Makapansgat

• Malapa Fossil Site, Cradle of Humankind

• Mapoch's Caves

• Motsetsi

N

• Nelson Bay Cave

O

• Onmeetbarediepgat

P

• Plovers Lake

R

• Rising Star Cave

S

• Sterkfontein

• Sterkfontein (Afrikaans for Strong Spring) is a set of limestone caves of special interest to paleo-anthropologists located in Gauteng province, about 40 km (23 miles) Northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa in the Muldersdrift area close to the town of Krugersdorp. The archaeological sites of Swartkrans (Afrikaans for Black Cliff) and Kromdraai (Afrikaans for Crooked Turn) (and the Wonder Cave) are in the same area. Sterkfontein is a South African National Heritage Site and was also declared a World Heritage Site in 2000 and the area in which it is situated, was named the Cradle of Humankind.
• The Sterkfontein Caves are also home to numerous wild African species including Belonogaster petiolata, a wasp species of which there is a large nesting presence Numerous early hominin remains have been found at the site over the last few decades. These have been attributed to Australopithecus, early Homo and Paranthropus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterkfontein

• Sudwala Caves

T

• Taung

W

• Wonder Cave (Kromdraai, Gauteng) /Wonderwerk Cave