W Cape coastal caves declared heritage site Cape Town - The
Western Cape has a new provincial heritage site: a series of
coastal caves at Pinnacle Point on the southern Cape coast near
Mossel Bay that contain archaeological artefacts and other
physical evidence critically important to the understanding of
how and when fully modern humans evolved. Several of these caves
were occupied by Stone Age people between about 165 000 and 50
000 years ago – the era in which scientists believe humans
developed the intellectual capacity that characterises modern
people and when they started developing technologies that were
key to allowing them to migrate out of Africa. The new site was
declared in terms of the National Heritage Resources Act and was
proclaimed last month in the final Western Cape Government
Provincial Gazette of 2012. An application to have Pinnacle
Point, one of only three African sites containing artefacts of
human occupation older than 120 000 years, also proclaimed as a
national heritage site is expe