Cradle of Humankind — Attraction in Mogale City Local Municipality

Except for the location on Google maps, I thoroughly loved this place. The oldest fossils of humankind of over 3 million years ago were found here. If you are interested in fossils and human evolution this is definitely a place you don't wanna miss. My experience in finding this place was interesting. Search for "cradle of humankind" and the maps takes you somewhere near the "Lion and Rihno park". I was literally lost and drove in circles to find if the cradle of human kind was hidden somewhere beneath the ground. Luckily, I found a geologist passing by and asked him for the way to "The cradle of human kind". For the nerd he was and replied " You are in the cradle of human kind". I asked him again to help me with the place where there is a museum or something of sorts. He again repeated the same thing and just drove past by. I parked a little ahead of the Lion and Rhino park watching the Lions behind the meshed fence on the roadside while a man on a bicycle stopped and talked to me. I asked him for directions and then learned that the place I was looking for is called "Maropeng" and I to search with that name. Then I searched for it and found my way. On the way I saw a board showing directions to Sterkfontein caves which I visited first. This was way back in May 2017 however, one of my colleagues had the same issues last year and had returned wasting a full day unsuccessful finding the place. I was surprised to know the same difficulty he went through and also was happy to have helped him with with the directions. Hopefully the issue is fixed now. Unfortunately, I wasn't aware of the way to contribute to Google...

The Cradle of Humankind has some fascinating history to explore dating back around 2 million years ago. The site itself is in the middle of nowhere and takes about 45 minutes to an hour to get there from Johannesburg. You drive through some interesting neighborhoods and a lot of the traffic lights simply don’t work so treat them as 4 way stops and drive carefully.

Overall I found the site to be very fascinating. My downside of the trip is that a lot of the exhibits that the families can interact with are worn down and some don’t even work. There is a restaurant there that does a buffet lunch and there are some basic food stores by the entrance. The caves are closed until further notice because they were flooded out a few years ago and they’re in the process of restoring them so I’m told.

You also need to be cautious of snakes in the area so pay attention to walkways. The site isn’t really that big and almost everything is contained under ground. There’s a quick little water wise which was very ordinary but there are some hazards on the ride. You travel through darkness and the makeshift caves you go through can knock your head as you travel down the stream of water so pay attention. To exit the area you walk through a spinning vortex which is guaranteed to make you dizzy. It’s supposed to represent the Big Bang but alas.

So the take away is fascinating information, ordinary and broken interactive exhibits, a water ride to be cautious of, a vortex to get dizzy on and...

So we did this on a whim. We were in Jberg for a 4 night stint after a safari visit. We literally googled the best things to do in Jberg and this did not disappoint. We booked through Trip Advisor and got an English speaking guide that walked us through a history of Jberg as we drove from our hotel to the Maropeng Visitor Center and then to the caves. We loved the museum that was following the short ride and spent about 1.5 hours getting to know the information in the museum. We grabbed a short bite to eat after experiencing the interactive displays. After our stay at the visitors center we moved to the caves which were a lovely treat. I would not recommend the caves to anyone that is not flexible and active as it seemed to catch some in our group out of sorts. There were a couple of areas of 1 meter by 1 meter where all 4s or crawling was needed. Beautiful caves and lovely information was shared by our guide throughout. I think this is a great stop for anyone looking to see where "they" came from or a bit of a history buff. We are mid-30s and had no problem at all. 60+ might be a bit too old for the...