The caves north-west of Johannesburg have rewritten the story of human origins. Raymond Dart described the Taung Child, an Australopithecus africanus youngster found in a quarry in 1924, in 1925; Robert Broom and John Robinson found the skull nicknamed Mrs Ples at Sterkfontein on 18 April 1947; and fragments of the skeleton called Little Foot, dated in 2015 to about 3.67 million years, were noticed by Ron Clarke in 1994 (some researchers argue for a younger age). Swartkrans, Kromdraai and Makapansgat add Paranthropus, early Homo and claims of very early fire. In 2013 two cavers found Homo naledi in the Rising Star system, announced by Lee Berger's team on 10 September 2015 and dated in 2017 to between about 335,000 and 236,000 years ago.
The south coast preserves early records of modern behaviour: heat-treated stone and shellfish at Pinnacle Point about 164,000 years ago, the ochre workshop at Blombos Cave about 100,000 years ago and its engraved ochre about 75,000 years ago, the bedding and arrows of Sibudu, the infant burial at Border Cave, the engraved eggshells of Diepkloof and the Lebombo bone tally. San painters decorated the shelters of the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg and the Cederberg for some three thousand years. The Fossil Hominid Sites of South Africa and the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg Park are UNESCO World Heritage properties.