We report on new research at Swartkrans Cave, South Africa, that provides evidence of two previously unrealized artifact- and fossil-bearing deposits. These deposits underlie a speleothem dated by the uranium-thorium disequilibrium technique to 110,000+/-1,980 years old, the first tightly constrained, geochronological date available for the site. Recovered fauna from the two underlying deposits-including, prominently, the dental remains of Paranthropus (Australopithecus) robustus from the uppermost layer (Talus Cone Deposit)-indicate a significantly older, late Pliocene or early Pleistocene age for these units. The lowest unit (LB East Extension) is inferred to be an eastward extension of the well-known Lower Bank of Member 1, the earliest surviving infill represented at the site. The date acquired from the speleothem also sets the maximum age of a rich Middle Stone Age lithic assemblage.
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Department of Vertebrates, Ditsong National Museum of Natural History (Transvaal Museum), Pretoria, 0001, South Africa.
The Early Pleistocene site of Swartkrans in South Africa's Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site has been significant for our understanding of the evolution of both early Homo and Paranthropus, as well as the earliest archaeology of southern Africa. Previous attempts to improve a faunal age estimate of the earliest deposit, Member 1, had produced results obtained with uranium-lead dating (U-Pb) on flowstones and cosmogenic burial dating of quartz, which placed the entire member in the range of >1.7/1.
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