Grahamstown Natural Science Museum

Like father, like son.  Chaos Boy has developed an interest in geography, the world, its wonders and its interesting bits and pieces like archaeology, legends and mysteries.  One night I was reading to him about Egypt (he chose the book, not me) and I told him that there is a real mummy in the Natural Science Museum in Grahamstown.  He has been nagging me ever since to take him and we finally had an opportunity during the winter school holidays. 

The original Albany Museum was established 1855, making it the second oldest museum in South Africa.  Over the years the Albany Museum has developed into a complex comprising five components of which the Natural Science Museum is only one of them.  The others are the History Museum, the Observatory Museum, the Provost Prison and Fort Selwyn.  The front of the core-block of the museum building as seen from the street was build between 1889 and 1902.  In 1941 a fire gutted the building, destroying much of the exhibition material, but the Museum was rebuilt and new exhibits constructed with specimens generously supplied by other museums in South Africa.

The museum's main theme covers the natural science and the natural history of the Eastern Cape and include earth sciences, archaeology, insects, birds, mammals, and plants.  A notable exhibit is a portion of one of the Gibeon meteorites which fell around Gibeon in Namibia approximately 600 million years ago.

Chaos Boy came into his element when we entered the dinosaur and fossil exhibition area.  The majority of the fossils here were found in the Eastern Cape and the exhibit includes a reconstruction of the first dinosaur discovered in South Africa, Stegosaur Paranthodon Africanus.  Another interesting part was the fact that there is a real life archaeologist working on real fossils who called us over and explained to us what he was doing.

But dinosaurs, meteors, stuffed birds and animals apart.  We came for one thing and (as it turned out much more and really not just) one thing only.  The mummy... and her cat.

St Blaze Cave

The coastline to the west of Cape St Blaze in Mossel Bay is made up of impressive cliffs looming about thundering surf and over time the elements has formed a series of caverns along this coast.  The early Khoi people took up residence in some of these caves and lived off the land and the ocean, surviving mostly on the abundant shellfish.

The biggest and most prominent of about 15 caves in the Cape St Blaze area is the St Blaze Cave just below the Cape St Blaze Lighthouse.  In the past the cave was also referred to as Bat Cave as thousands of bats used to live in at.  Looking about on my visit I think all the human activity has chased off the bats to another cave in the area.  The cave is 12 meters deep, 22 meters at its mouth with a roof 10 meters high and and is a popular public view and whale watching point in the town.

In 1999 the caves in the area were selected for excavation as part of The Mossel Bay Archeology Project. The excavations were especially successful in St Blaze Cave and Cave PP13B. They revealed evidence that early man lived along the Southern Cape coast 164,000 years ago and made use of marine resources for food. 

Drakensberg Rock Art

One of the reasons that the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site is the fact that it has the biggest concentration of rock paintings in Africa south of the Sahara.  These rock paintings were left behind by the San people and shows off their way of life and believes.  There are a number of rock art sites in the Royal Natal National Park with one of them only accessible on a walking tour with a local guide.

The walk is about a kilometer in distance and takes you into the hills to a sheltered rock overhang.  The is only the second time that I have had the opportunity to see rock art in its original environment.  The other time was at a site near Alicedale in the Eastern Cape.  Looking at the photo above you can see some of the rock art about a meter or so above the guide's head.

This is just a closer look at the rock art seen in the previous picture

Our guide, Mduduzi Shabalala, is very knowledgeable in his subject.  We asked him what the grooves in the rocks were and he demonstrated to us how the San people would have inserted sticks into those grooves to rest their elbows on while painting.  In addition to all the rock are information Mdu also told us about the Zulu people, the villages in the area as well as the flora of the Berg.

This painting shows a San figure running

 This is an Eland with, if I remember right cause I could be wrong, a baby eland underneath it

 Eland featured quite prominently in most of the rock art sights all over Southern Africa which shows that they were quite common in those days and played an important part in the lives of the San.  An interesting addition in this picture is the cobra beneath the eland.

I got extra excited when Mdu pointed out a couple of fossils next to the rock paintings.  I have a particular interest in fossils and even wanted to be an archaeologist at one stage in my life.  I have a small collection of fossils and other pieces and the Indiana Jones in me would love to be able to add to it, although I would never damage a site like this to get my hands on more.  The problem is that some people would and that is why these kinds of sites has to be protected and preserved. 

Nieu Bethesda Fossil Centre

I love Indiana Jones and when I was younger I wanted to be an archaeologist discovering lost civilisations and crawling through jungles looking for artifacts. I still have an great interest in archaeology and have a small collection of fossils and other interesting bits which I hope to still add to in future. So on a visit to Nieu Bethesda in the Karoo I reveled in the knowledge that I would be able to visit the Kitching Fossil Exploration Centre next to the world famous Owl House.

The Karoo is one of the richest fossil treasure chests in the world. Going through the centre visitors can see some of these fossils as well as models of what some of the prehistoric animals from the area would have looked at.

A guide then takes you to a nearby river bed and point out some of the fossils visible and embedded in the rock. How I wish I could get my hands on one or two of the specimens from that area. They would truly be great additions to my collection.

Cave drawings

The Khoisan people were the original inhabitants of much of southern Africa. Having had a relatively lighter skin color than most black Africans, evidence shows that they lived in the area long before the Black people moving down the east and west coasts of Africa arrived in the south or European colonization.

The Khoisan people are divided into two cultures. The hunter gatherer San (commonly known as Bushmen) and the pastoral Khoi (sometimes known as Hottentots). The San was found more to the north of South Africa, Namibia and Botswana where it is drier, while the Khoi lived in the south were there is a higher rainfall and thus more grazing areas for their cattle. Today the last of the San people can be found in the Kalahari (north western South Africa and southern Namibia), while the descendants of the Khoi can be found amongst the Coloured people of South Africa.

All over South Africa there is evidence of Khoisan people living in cave openings and under overhangs. In most of these locations people have found arrow heads, pottery shards, stone tools, beads and most evidently, cave paintings.

Most of these cave paintings are done of animals and people. All kinds of animals have been identified in these paintings, but most of them are antelope like eland. In some paintings hunters can be seen hunting with spears and bow and arrows.

These picture were taken on a farm outside the town of Alicedale about an hour east of Port Elizabeth. We were taken through the bush into and up a valley before getting to the overhang. The site isn't open to the public, but there are many public cave painting sites in the Western Cape, Eastern Cape and the Drakensberg.