2016 ENTRANCE FEES TO THE WEST COAST NATIONAL PARK PER DAY:

R45 per adult and R22 per child

R64 per adult and R32 per child during flower season from 1 August to 30 September

Entrance fees for international visitors (without SA ID documents) are more.

GATE OPENING AND CLOSING TIMES:

1 September to 31 March:   07:00 to 19:00

1 April to 31 August:              07:00 to 18:00

Please take time required to travel and search for caches into consideration.

Flower season from 1 August to 30 September: - Postberg will be open from 09:00 to 17:00

The cache is only available during office hours.

EDUCATIONAL LOGGING REQUIREMENTS

In order to substantiate your visit and comply with the educational requirement for Earth Caches you have to submit your answers to the following questions to the cache developers via their profile:

1. In layman’s terms, explain how Eve’s footprint originated.
2. Why are fossil human footprints such a rare find?
3. Where is the original Eve’s footprint held?
4. Approximately how old is Eve’s footprint, and how has the age been established?
5. Explain the difference of texture between normal dune sand and the sand of the fossilized footprint.
6. The footprint rocks are obviously sedimentary - Are there similar processes of new rock formation or erosion (rock and sand being transported away) that still occur in the West Coast National Park? - (Hint C8).

• ADDITIONAL LOGGING REQUIREMENT
• Please post a photo of yourselves and Eve’s footprint at the Geelbek information centre.

Eve's footprint

Eve's footprint is the popular name for a set of fossilized footprints discovered on the shore of Langebaan Lagoon, South Africa in 1995 near Kraalbaai. The estimated age of Eve's footprint means that the individual who left the tracks in the soil, thought to be female, would have lived within the current wide range of estimates for the date of Mitochondrial Eve.

The cache will take you to Geelbek in the West Coast National Park where a mould of the original footprint is found. For both scenic and further education you may visit the area of the find at Kraalbaai: S 33° 08.884' E 18° 01.882'

^HISTORY

The three footprints were found in 1995 by geologist David Roberts from the Council for Geoscience and announced at a press conference with paleoanthropologist Lee R. Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand at Johannesburg, South Africa, at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C., USA. The discovery was documented in the August, 1997, issue of the South African Journal of Science.

Berger and Roberts say the prints were made on a steep sand dune during a turbulent rainstorm. The location where they were found is in southwest South Africa about 60 to 70 miles (about 100 kilometres) northwest of Cape Town in the West Coast National Park. They were found in a ledge of sandstone at the edge of Langebaan Lagoon near the Atlantic coast.

The maker of the footprints lived in the time of the emergence of modern Homo sapiens, or people anatomically similar to humans alive today. The footprints measure eight and a half inches (22-26 centimeters) in length and are about the size of a modern-day (U.S.) woman's size 7½ shoe (British size 6, continental European size 39½). In one foot impression the big toe, ball, arch, and heel clearly are discernible. Roberts thinks that the prints belong to an ancient female about 1.5 meters (5'3" to 5'4") tall. He said that the woman who made these footprints would resemble a contemporary woman.

Fewer than three dozen hominid fossils from the period 100,000 to 200,000 years ago have been found. Berger said, "These footprints are traces of the earliest modern people." Roberts explained further that dry sand blew over the wet footprints and filled the prints. They eventually were buried to a depth of about nine meters (thirty feet). The sand and accompanying crushed seashells hardened like cement into sedimentary rock and protected the footprints.

The team later found associated evidence of stone tool use (a core, scrapers, cutting blades, and a spear point) in the same area that is believed to date from the same period. There also was evidence of the use of ochre, leading to the intriguing possibility that the 'Eve' of 117,000 years ago may have been wearing the colorful powder.

The 'footprints of Eve' is a fanciful name implying that the West Coast, where the footprints where made, was a kind of Garden of Eden.

Perhaps that's not too far from the truth.

Nearby is the Klasies River Mouth site, where a large cave seems to have been home to a group of early humans about 130 000 years ago.

If it wasn't exactly Eden, at least these people seem to have had a good address, and a good lifestyle, with plenty to eat and a pleasant climate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve's_footprint

Photos from: Geelbek Information Centre