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History: On the farm Doornlaagte about 37 kilometres from Kimberley on the road to Griquatown, there is an extensive road-maker’s quarry just to the right of the road. At the north-western corner of the quarry a sturdy fence encloses a small area. There, at a depth of 1,5 m below the surface of the calcareous soil, evidence has been found of human occupation between 50 000 and 100 000 years ago.
The discoverer of this prehistoric home site was the observant driver of a bull-dozer. The quarry was opened in 1960 in connection with the construction of a new road to Schmidtsdrift. One day, when the excavation in this part of the quarry reached a depth of 1,5 m, the blade of the bull-dozer turned up a strangely-shaped stone artefact. Soon another specimen appeared, and then many others. The driver lost no time in reporting his discovery at the Alexander McGregor Memorial Museum in Kimberley and carefully put aside as many of the specimens as he could retrieve. In 1963 four archaeologists went to the site to conduct careful investigations. With great care they examined about 230 t of the calcified deposits over an area of 15 m by 6 m and exposed nearly two thousand stone artefacts. Then they dug other test excavations and established that the implementiferous layers extend through a depth of almost one metre.
The evidence shows that, thousands of years ago, there was a shallow pan of water here and along its banks which extended in a north-south direction there lived people of the Earlier Stone Age. Attracted by the abundance of game that came to drink at the pan, generation after generation of men lived there for thousands of years. The stone implements used by one generation were blown over by sand and trodden in by the next. In this way one living floor succeeded another. The part originally revealed to the archaeologists by the bull-dozer was merely the topmost living floor of the sequence.
The great importance of this site lies particularly in the fact that the artefacts were not disturbed but were covered by sand in the positions in which they were left by their makers. Such sites are rare, and yield important infor mation to the scientist. From the disposition of such undisturbed artefacts valuable information about the ways of life of the people, such as the preparation of food, the use of wood, the preparation of skins for use and so on, can be deduced.
Visual Description: Doornlaagte is an Earlier Stone Age site dating to between 250 000 and 700 000 years.
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Condition: Good
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Materials: Natural
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