His successors Phillip Tobias and C.K. Brain have unearthed hundreds of additional specimens of our remote human ancestors from the caves of Sterkfontein, Swartkrans, and Makapansgat. The reopening of South Africa was celebrated last June by a Dual Congress of the International Association for the study of Human Palaeontology and the International Association of Human Biologists, held at Sun City and attended by several hundred scientists, many of them setting foot in this nation for the first time. The high point for me was a small-group excursion to archeological sites north and east of Cape Town, led by Hilary Deacon of the University of Stellenbosch, a leading figure in the study of human evolution in South Africa. The southern coast of Africa has provided a congenial environment to our ancestors for at least three million years. Here two oceans, the Atlantic and the Indian, come together.
Wild proteas grow along the roads.
Near the shore, banks of mussels tempt the aficionado. Penguins and right whales sport in waters that attract surfers from all over the world. Archeologists in South Africa are working at dozens of sites. We visited some of them in our excursion along the Garden route from Port Elizabeth to Cape Town, the southern edge of the continent, and north from Cape Town to Lambert Bay, along the western edge of Africa. Richard Klein, a professor at Stanford and an Academy Fellow, has made tremendous contributions to South African archeology.