The World Heritage Committee has inscribed 721 properties on the World Heritage List (554 cultural, 144 natural and 23 mixed in 124 States Parties). The List, arranged alphabetically by nominating State Party, is current as of December 2001. The list will be updated following the next meeting of the Committee in June 2002. The complete list is at UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

A UNESCO World Heritage Site

Photo of one of the sites at Sterkfontein where some of the possible ancestors of modern man once lived.

The Sterkfontein area of South Africa’s North West Province was added to the World Heritage List last spring

Late last year, the newswires reported that the best current evidence science has shows that modern man, homo sapiens, arose in Africa some 140,000 years ago. Humans then began a gradual migration north and eastward that led to the settlement of Europe (110,000 years ago), Asia (60,000 years ago), Australasia (40,000 years ago) and the Americas (20,000 years ago).

Outside of Ethiopia and Kenya, where the great paleontologists Raymond Dart, Richard and Mary Leakey, and Donald Johanson did their literally groundbreaking work, South Africa has been the other place on mankind’s home continent where significant fossil remains of ancient man have been found in abundance.

So abundant that UNESCO added the Sterkfontein area of South Africa’s North West Province to the World Heritage List last spring. This area, north of Johannesburg, has produced significant fossil finds since the 1940s, including “Little Foot,” a 3.3-million year old skeleton that some scientists believe could be a direct link between apes (pongids) and humans (hominids).

In its report, the UNESCO committee that recommended heritage status said, “The Sterkfontein area contains an exceptionally large and scientifically significant group of sites which throw light on the earliest ancestors of humankind. They constitute a vast reserve of scientific information, the potential of which is enormous.”

The new heritage site, consisting of an inner core of important fossil sites and a surrounding buffer of land, is relatively close to an abundance of visitor-oriented services, as well as other South African national parks and wildlife refuges.

 — Patrick Totty