Ruminations: The Miracle Cave, South Africa

"What we have here in the cave are milestones of these very dramatic events in human evolution."
"I can't think of any other site I know of, certainly not in sub-Saharan Africa, that has a complete sequence of two million years of human occupation."
"We can't say whether these people were actually making the fire, or whether they were just using fire. But it's still a very momentous moment in human evolution and development."
"Because once you have fire, it opens a whole set of new things that you can do -- like protect and warm yourself, create light and cook food."
Liora Kolska Horwitz, researcher, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Natural History Collection

"It's really interesting to understand how our species evolved with time."
"Every evidence and clue that can shed light on very early histories is very fascinating ... it's a great feeling to be part of this."
Ron Shaar, Professor of Geology, Hebrew University Institute of Earth Sciences

"So there are traces of fire, but how is the fire being used? There are stone tools, but what were they being used for?"
"Can we draw out more of the lives of these people at different points in time?"
Michael Chazan, co-director, Wonderwerk Cave project, University of Toronto

Sampling for dating Wonderwerk Cave Research Project

In Afrikaans, the language of South Africa-dominated Dutch the cave named Wondewerk is translated to English as Miracle Cave. A place of ancient geology where protohumans found refuge in humanity's primordial history. Ancient as in two million years ago when occupation of the cave by humans has been verified by a team of archaeologists in a collaboration between researchers from University of Toronto and Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The immense cave in North Cape Province, South Africa, has attracted countless excavations and exploratory visits from the international community of archaeologists for the past 80 years. The cave is extensive, estimated at 140 metres in length, and as a result of its presence as a geological environmental area of protection where humans could control the menaces that lurked outside the cave from entrance by predators it was a site of some importance over countless eras of human existence.

Sedimentary layers examined by researchers render a picture of how human evolution devolved, explained Liora Kolska Horwitz, one of the co-directors of the Wonderwerk Cave expedition. A project that has continued for over fifteen years of discovery. Evidence of Oldowan tools have been found in the oldest layers of the sedimentary layers in the cave. These are, for the most part, sharp stone flakes and simple tools devised for chopping.

2013 Excavation Wonderwerk Cave Excavation Project

Early hand axes have been uncovered within newer layers merely a million years old. Burnt bone, burnt stone tools, sediment and ash attest to the use of fire -- all exciting, revelatory discoveries -- yet discoveries that while answering some puzzles of human existence in the long distant past, open up new questions that answers are sought for.

And while it's clear that the earliest hominids to appear on Earth occupied the Wonderwerk Cave, there is ample evidence of far more recent occupation, where European farmers who travelled to Africa as colonial occupiers of a vast, richly endowed land, made the cave their temporary shelter while in the process of building farm steads in the early 1900s.

How long each succeeding group over the aeons remained, to account for the past two million years of human existence is unclear, but the exploratory revelations thus far revealed stun Earth Sciences professor Ron Shaar, lead author of the study. Dr. Horwitz theorizes that the cave may also have acquired an additional status beyond providing safety and shelter; a reputation as a place of spirituality.

That value, held by local communities might have imbued the cave with spiritual dimensions "from the beginning of time". Its vast size alone identified it as a landmark people invested with great meaning, and kept returning to. In the geography it occupies it is a geological anomaly. There are few rock shelters or caves in its location, making it unique in a myriad of ways.

Hunters would also recognize the site as a place to search the landscape, looking out as it does onto a plateau. Continued collaboration between archaeologists, geologists and allied scientists in an effort to determine precisely how hominids interacted with the Wonderwerk Cave will provide ample opportunities for ongoing investigations by the research community at large.