Cradle of Life: The Story of the Magaliesberg and the Cradle of Humankind

Title: Cradle of Life
Subtitle: The Story of the Magaliesberg and the Cradle of Humankind
Author: Vincent Carruthers
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Imprint: Struik Nature
Cape Town, South Africa 2019
ISBN 9781775845973 / ISBN 978-1-77-584597-3
Softcover, 18 x 23 cm, 256 pages, throughout colour images, maps

Desription: Cradle of Life: The Story of the Magaliesberg and the Cradle of Humankind

Cradle of Life: The Story of the Magaliesberg and the Cradle of Humankind traces the entire story of life on Earth by exploring the history of the Cradle-Magaliesberg landscape. Each chapter reveals an aspect of the past that has been recorded in the landscape, moving step-by-step from the beginnings of time up to the present. 'Interludes' between chapters offer some contextual details, or add background information to the chronicle. Each chapter can be read as a separate episode, a narrative about one aspect of the past, but the chapters are ordered in historical sequence so that the book can be read from beginning to end as a complete story of this region.

The three parts of the book each deal with a different period. Part 1, 'Life and Landscape', focuses on the emergence of the geomorphology (the structure, origins and development of the Earth's surface) and the living environment of the region before the time of the hominins. In this section, time is measured in billions of years, and scientific disciplines ranging from radio astronomy to microbiology are used to describe the origins and development of the landscape and the life that inhabited it. In Part 2, 'Human Evolution', the time scale narrows down from billions to millions of years, and we turn to the evolutionary sciences:

Paleoanthropology, genetics, taphonomy (the study of how fossils form from dead organisms), and others - to explain the Cradle's remarkable fossil record and the evolution of humankind. Part 3, 'Archaeology and History', covers the 250,000 years of human existence and follows the history of our species, Homo sapiens, from the Stone Ages to the present. Archaeology gives insights into the lives of those who inhabited the region in the early millennia, while written sources and oral tradition guide the narrative through recent centuries up to the present day.

Desription: Cradle of Life: The Story of the Magaliesberg and the Cradle of Humankind

INTRODUCTION
The Cradle-Magaliesberg
The Magaliesberg Biosphere Reserve
The Cradle of Humankind World
Heritage Site
PART 1 Life and Landscape
Part 1 Timeline
Interlude 1 Measuring deep time
THE BIRTH OF THE PLANET
Interlude 2 Geology
THE FIRST LANDMASS AND EARLY LIFE
EVOLUTION AND EXTINCTION
Interlude 3 Vegetation and habitats
AFRICA
PART 2 Human Evolution
Part 2 Timeline
Interlude 4 Evolutionary Science
THE HUMAN EVOLUTIONARY LNE
Interlude 5 Fossil sites in the Cradle
THE CRADLE HOMININS
THE HUMAN GENUS
PART 3 Archaeology and History
Part 3 Timeline
Interlude 8 Discovering the historical past
THE FIRST PEOPLE
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
BOERS AND BRITISH
SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
CONCLUSION
The Cradle of Life on the Geological Time Scale
GLOSSARY
SOURCES
INDEX