|
Langebaan Accommodation: Nearby towns with accommodation:
Vredenburg Accommodation | Saldanha Bay Accommodation | Jacobsbaai Accommodation
Paternoster Accommodation | Stompneus Bay Accommodation | Yzerfontein Accommodation
Langebaan is a town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. It is situated on the Langebaan lagoon, part of the West Coast National Park
The footprints of Eve is the popular name for a set of fossilized footprints discovered on the shore of Langebaan Lagoon, South Africa in 1995. They are thought to be those of a female human and have been dated to approximately 117,000 years ago. This makes them the oldest known footprints of an anatomically-modern human. The date also means that the individual who left these footprints in this soil, if female, is a candidate for the title of Eve (the hypothetical common ancestor of modern humanity.
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 at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C. 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 preserved prints were moved to the South African Museum in Cape Town for protection and a concrete replica was mounted on the shores of Langebaan
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 centimetres) 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.
| 
