CRADLE OF LIFE: REVIEW

This book has obviously been a labour of love by Magaliesberg expert Vincent Carruthers and is well worth having on your coffee table. (Review by Barry Meehan)

Billed as “the jewel in South Africa’s evolutionary crown”, the Magaliesberg Biosphere Reserve has attracted world-wide interest and furnished undeniable evidence about the evolution of our planet and its people.

Vincent Carruthers has done a remarkable job in collating this beautifully-illustrated work. In Cradle of Life: The Story of the Magaliesberg and the Cradle of Humankind, he takes us on a journey of discovery through the birth of our planet right up to the present. It is intelligently written and chronologically laid out in three distinct parts:

Part 1 – LIFE AND LANDSCAPE, which includes

•           The Birth of the Planet from 13,800 million years ago to 3,900 million years ago

•           The First Landmass and Early Life – 3,100 million years ago to 2,060 million years ago

•           Evolution and Extinction from 2,650 million years ago to 180 million years ago

•           Africa – 180 million years ago to 20 million years ago

Part 2 – HUMAN EVOLUTION, including

•           The Human Evolutionary Line, from 7 million years ago to 3.5 million years ago

•           The Cradle Hominins – 3.7 million years ago to 1.9 million years ago

•           The Human Genus – 2.3 million years ago to 200,000 years ago

Part 3 – ARCHEOLOGY AND HISTORY, including

•           The First People – 200,000 years ago to 200 years ago

•           The Nineteenth Century – 1827 to 1867

•           Boers and British – 1877 to 1948

•           Science and Engineering, from 1924 until the modern day

Some readers not used to this sort of factual voyage of discovery might find it a tad difficult to come to terms with the scale of the book’s time-line (after all, who can actually envisage 13,800 million years of our planet’s existence?) but illustrations, charts, maps and well laid-out timelines lead to a greater understanding of how we all got here.

The information afforded to us by Carruthers is truly fascinating, giving us real insights into the formation of our landscapes, the emergence of life, the rise of hominids (members of the primate family Hominidae that includes the great apes) and hominins (members of the subfamily Hominini that includes humans and their ancestral relatives since their evolutionary divergence from apes) , the stone and iron ages, early migration patterns, wars and even modern developments in the Magaliesberg area.

Any if you are a bit confused by the -ologies of this world, there is a very detailed glossary at the back of the book which explains the difference between cosmology, ecology, geomorphology, morphology, palaeoanthropology, palaeontology, seismology and so much more.

This book has obviously been a labour of love by Magaliesberg expert Vincent Carruthers and is well worth having on your coffee table.

Cradle of Life: The Story of the Magaliesberg and the Cradle of Humankind is published by PenguinRandomHouse. ISBN: 9781775845973. RRP: R300.00 – Barry Meehan