75,000 years ago early humans built a stone calendar that predates all other man-made structures found to date. This 'African Stonehenge' has for the first time created a link to the countless other stone ruins in southern Africa and suggests that these ruins are much older than we thought. The complex that links Waterval Boven, Machadodorp, Carolina and Dullstroom, covers an area larger then modern-day Johannesburg.
Six years of research by a group of independent scientists and explorers has delivered what may be the crucial missing elements in our understanding of the lives and development of early modern humans. Their discovery has been released in a book they call Adam's Calendar. But the research has also shown that these stone settlements represent the most mysterious and misunderstood structures found to date. It points to a civilisation that lived and dug for gold in this part of the world for thousands of years. And if this is in fact the cradle of humankind, we may be looking at the activities of the oldest civilisation on Earth.The site is situated on the edge of what is known as the Transvaal Escarpment which is geologically black reef quartzite, rich in gold. This is incidentally where the gold rush took place in the early 1800's. But the monoliths at Adam's Calendar are all dolerite. The closest vein of dolerite to the site is about a kilometre away. This means that the architects went to a lot of trouble to get the monoliths there. The central monolith is purposefully carved to allow the setting sun to cast a shadow on what we call the flat calendar monolith.
It is estimated that there are over 20,000 ancient stone ruins scattered throughout the mountains of southern Africa. Modern historians have been speculating about the origins of these ruins, often calling them 'cattle kraal of little historic importance'. The truth of the matter is that closer scientific inspection paints a completely different and astonishing new picture about the ancient history of these stone ruins of southern Africa. The scientific reality is that we actually know very little about these spectacular ancient ruins and it is a great tragedy that thousands have already been destroyed through sheer ignorance by forestry, farmers and development.
