| Cape Town History | ||
| Evolution & Prehistory | ||
| The Birth of Table Mountain | ||
| Table Mountain is one of the oldest mountains on earth, six times older than the Himalayas and five times older than the Rockies. It's story begins eight hundred million years ago when sandstone began to form underwater. Sandstone is a relatively soft rock but it was given strength by magma rising from the earth's core. When magma reaches the surface it often forms a volcano, but in this case it stopped underground, cooled and formed hard granite. Around 300 million years ago the mountain was still at sea level during an ice age and ice sheets flattened the layers of sandstone creating the flat surface that today we call the 'Table Top'. When the continents split apart, stresses and pressures built up in the earth's crust. If the rocks of Table Mountain had been made only of sandstone they would have folded under the pressure, but the granite gave it strength, deflecting the forces down. Slowly this process forced the layers of rock to rise, slowly becoming the kilometre high mountain we know today. | ||
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| Plant and Animal Evolution | ||
For a billion years the region around Cape Town was predominantly lush, subtropical rainforest. The superb West Coast Fossil Park near Langebaan has revealed fossils of great and fascinating creatures that lived in wetlands and forests 5 million years ago - double tusked elephants, saber-toothed cats, various species of hyena, ancestral birds and white rhino. Then the climate became drier, and the animal population changed. Some plants were better suited to a drier climate and began to dominate and diversify, slowly evolving into the unique Cape FloralKingdom of today. This complex kingdom of at least 8500 plant species are known as 'fynbos' because they have hardy wooden stems and fine leaves. In general they grow low to the ground and are extremely well adapted to high winds, long droughts, fire and wet, cool winters. Although fynbos provides little grazing for animals, herds of elephant, antelope and buffalo continued to migrate to the area. |
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| Human Evolution | ||
| Important evidence of early human evolution has been found in South Africa, particularly near Johannesburg. But the oldest evidence of modern humans (Homo Sapien Sapiens) found anywhere in the world, are in the region of Cape Town. In the 1960s Anthropologists dated bones of modern man found at Klasies River, on the coast between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, at 80,000 years old. In 1994 further discoveries at this cave were dated 100,000 years old. On the Cape Peninsula at Fishhoek and Echo Cave remains have been dated to 75,000 and 50,000 years and rock art as old as 28,000 years. But the oldest record of all is of footprints made by a human woman near the lagoon at Langebaan - just north of Cape Town. These prints are dated at 117,000 years old and are called 'the footsteps of Eve'. They are on display at the SA Museum in Cape Town. According to this evidence, the first modern people that evolved lived around Cape Town. | ||
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