Pinnacle point: World heritage status for South African caves labelled 'point of human origins'

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00:00Underneath this private golf course in Mossel Bay is an archaeological site that has revealed

00:05human behaviour from 160,000 years ago.

00:09The calcium in its unique rock formation allowed for the preservation of artefacts from the

00:14Stone Age.

00:15Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, these caves are labelled the Point of Human Origins.

00:19So when people walk in here, no matter where you're from, we can somehow trace ourselves

00:24back here and so we say welcome home.

00:27The caves provided the earliest evidence of humans exploiting shellfish and using fire

00:31to make tools.

00:32You can see the older materials at the bottom, the younger materials at the top, right?

00:36So the material on the surface here is dated to around about 100,000 years ago.

00:41This is a long Middle Stone Age blade in quartzite.

00:45And then if you look down over here, there's a limpet shell over here, there's a nice limpet

00:49shell and then these are natural, that's a natural rock over there.

00:55Natural stone artefacts, there's another blade sticking out over there.

00:58Researchers have made an effort to involve the local community.

01:02Gail Baikies, a chief from the indigenous Koi people, works at a tourism centre dedicated

01:06to the site.

01:07The Pinnacle Point Cave 13b, I don't even want to call it the Pinnacle Point Cave 13b,

01:11I want to call it the Koi Cave or the Sahara Cave, the Bushman Cave.

01:17That cave is a cave of pride, heritage, fulfilment, the abundant joy because our ancestors stayed

01:28in that cave.

01:29The caves were discovered in the 1990s during a heritage impact assessment for the development

01:33of the Pinnacle Point Golf Club.

01:35Dr Curtis Marine, who worked on the site, says the discovery of shellfish exploitation

01:40suggested sedentary living, meaning early humans might have lived in one spot rather

01:45than being nomadic as previously thought.

01:48So a normal terrestrial hunter-gatherer might move their home 30 times a year, right, but

01:56a coastal hunter-gatherer can form a village.

02:01Plans are already in place to extend the Pinnacle Point Discovery Centre to showcase South Africa's

02:0612th World Heritage Site.

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