My personal observations show that, although the overall distribu- 

 tion of baboons in southern Africa during historic times was very 

 wide, this was limited on a more detailed scale by the presence of 

 suitable sleeping places. These could be in the form of large trees, 

 inaccessible ledges on cliffs or caves and, in the Sterkfontein valley 

 area, I was able to document the use of dolomite caves as baboon 

 sleeping sites during the frosty winter months on this highveld grass- 

 land (Brain, 1981a). As a result of the long and multifaceted Swart- 

 krans investigation, we came to the conclusion that this cave had 

 been used by hominids as a sleeping shelter, as will be described 

 shortly. However, this by no means made them immune to nocturnal 

 predatory danger from time to time. 



An Overview of the Swartkrans Cave and its Taphonomic 

 Interpretation 



In 1947, Robert Broom and John Robinson were conducting their 

 fossil search at Sterkfontein and found the well-known skull of Aus- 

 tralopithecus that became known as "Mrs. Pies." But, after this, the 

 prospects in the "Type Site quarry" of Sterkfontein did not look 

 favorable and they moved their field team in 1948 across the valley 

 to Swartkrans, where fossil-rich breccia was exposed on the hillside. 

 This proved immediately productive of remains of robust australo- 

 pithecines, and a mandible of a more advanced hominid, initially 

 described as as Telanthropus capensis (Broom and Robinson, 1949), 

 but later transferred to Homo erectus (Robinson, 1961), also came 

 to light. In fact, this was the first demonstration of the coexistence 

 of Homo and Paranthropus — one that is now known to have per- 

 sisted for over a million years. A varied fauna was found to accom- 

 pany these hominids. These excavations exposed a thick seam of 

 pure white stalagmite along the north wall of the cave, which was 

 claimed by a local lime miner who spent the next year blasting it 

 out. Broom died in 1951 and shortly thereafter, the site was aban- 

 doned. 



Although I had done a geological investigation there in the 1950s, 

 my paleontological investigations at Swartkrans started in 1965 and 

 it soon became apparent that much earlier, extensive lime mining 



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