Cradle of Humankind

I probably should have been an anthropologist or an archaeologist. It has everything I would have wanted in a career - travel, culture, lots of cool treasure to display in your house like fossilized narwhal tusks and shrunken heads. But I went the practical route and became a computer scientist who morphed into a marketing / salesperson who morphed into an entrepreneur / venture capitalist who finally morphed into a not-for-profit event planner. I justify any regrets by saying that I would never have met my husband if I had taken a different path and pursued my dream job. He is my consolation prize!

But still (not-so-very) deep inside I am a closet anthropologist / archaeologist. I always check out archaeological museums and sites whenever we travel no matter how obscure and hard to get to they are and I always drag my consolation prize with me! (Just ask him sometime to tell you about the detour to the Ladin Museum I made him take while we were on a ski holiday in the Dolomites!)




I also try to take in and study the local culture through whatever means they choose to express themselves, be it dance, music, art, or theatre. I have even tried to express myself first-hand in some places, such as my tango lessons in Buenos Aires for instance and my calligraphy and illumination instruction in Dublin.

I found a Roman coin!

But I did manage to get my shoes and hands dirty on an archaeological dig one summer in Macedonia. I was part of a group excavating the Byzantine layer of a site called Hereclea Lyncestis in the Republic of Macedonia. Part of the reason I chose Macedonia is that my father's father's family probably came from a town in Albania called Durres when it was (briefly) under Macedonian rule. Durres changed names many times in its history depending on who was in charge, the Greeks (Dyrrhachion), the Latins (Dyrrachium), the Turks (Dirac), the Italians (Durazzo), the Slavs (Drac, the original spelling of my maiden name before Ellis island), or the Macedonians (Drach, my maiden name). Who knows what my father's father's real last name was. I doubt the town was named after us. Quite the contrary. His grandfather and his great-uncle emigrated to Slovakia from Macedonian-occupied Albania and were probably called "the brothers from Drach" and the more Slavic name Drac stuck.

Anyway, Macedonia seemed like a good place to go on a dig. I had been to Czechoslovakia before including the town where my father was born - and I still have relatives - in the High Tatras but I had never been to Macedonia and would probably never go there on a regular vacation. (Who goes to Macedonia on vacation? Only Czechoslovakians. Bad joke.)



The weather was fine, not as oppressively hot as say Egypt or Israel and not as cold and windy as the Orkneys can be even in July. Our accommodations were nice enough in an air-conditioned hotel off the pedestrian center in the charming and culturally rich city of Bitola instead of the typical trailer isolated on the excavation site. They offered one or two consecutive three-week sessions as opposed to a minimum of six months on most digs. And I happen to be very fascinated by the Byzantine culture. I preceded the dig with a week touring the Byzantine hotbeds of Istanbul, Athens and Thessaloniki to inspire me and had a truly wonderful experience overall. A dream (job) come true. I hope to do something similar here in Africa someday.

In the meantime I will have to "settle" for the nearby Cradle of Humankind with its fascinating Visitors Center at Maropeng and the Caves of Sterkfontein. Not a bad consolation prize either. In the Cradle of Humankind the largest cache in the world, about 1,000 hominid fossils, have been discovered spanning several million years. The oldest hominid fossils from the Cradle are more than 3-million years old and belong to the genus Australopithecus.

The world-renowned Sterkfontein Caves is home to the oldest and most continuous paleontological dig in the world. It is also the site of discovery of the famous pre-human skull affectionately known as “Mrs. Ples”, and an almost complete hominid skeleton called “Little Foot”, dated 2.3 and 4.17 million years old respectively. No one knows what still lies hidden in the rocks of the Sterkfontein Caves. The World Heritage Site status the area now enjoys ensures that what is deep within its core will be protected and explored forever.

Lucy in Times Square

They were just finishing the Olduvai Gorge Museum in the Ngorongoro Conservation Park in Tanzania when I was there in 1979 and I was not able to see the Leakey's discoveries first-hand. I did however see Lucy, the oldest unearthed hominid skeleton who was found by Donald Johanson as part of a Leakey excavation, at the Times Square Discovery Center in New York a couple of years ago. Coincidentally Lucy just returned home this very month from her six year American tour. She is now back in Ethiopia where she was originally found by Johanson in 1974!

I am very lucky to have the Cradle of Humankind nearby to visit as often as I want and perhaps someday to even get my hands dirty again there in the Caves. I did ship my gloves and boots to Joburg just in case!