At the De Hoop Nature Reserve outside Cape Town, Sarah Kingdom discovers an extraordinary exhibition that reveals how the earliest Homo sapiens shaped the foundations of modern humanity.

A First Encounter

It was a sunny afternoon when I stepped into the quiet of the Origins of Early Southern Sapiens Behaviour Exhibition at De Hoop Nature Reserve, in South Africa’s Western Cape. The outside world, the brilliant sunshine, the chatter of the Cape sugarbirds in the fynbos, all fell away as I walked towards the first display case. Inside lay a piece of ochre, scratched with deliberate, geometric lines. These markings were not random, they were intentional, purposeful, and symbolic. And they were old, astonishingly and incredibly old. More than 70,000 years separated me from the hand that carved them, and yet the message was clear; someone, long before me, had been thinking, creating and expressing.

That is the extraordinary gift of this exhibition. It creates a conversation with our earliest ancestors, and demonstrates that the roots of our creativity, curiosity, and culture lie right here, on the southern coast of Africa.

De Hoop: Where Past Meets Present

De Hoop Nature Reserve, a three-hour drive east of Cape Town, is already a destination of remarkable beauty and contrasts. The 36,000-hectare reserve encompasses vast stretches of rare Cape Floral Kingdom fynbos, a Ramsar-listed wetland, and a pristine 70km coastline where southern right whales gather in sheltered waters each winter, to mate and birth their young. Most visitors come here for the wildlife encounters, the hiking, and the cycling; few would expect to find themselves face-to-face with the origins of modern mankind.

At the De Hoop Collection, historic farm buildings have been turned into a welcoming lodge, and now, tucked away among them, is a gallery space that hosts an exhibition connecting this wild landscape with one of the most significant archaeological stories in the world.

The Exhibition: Tracing the First Sparks of Humanity

The Origins of Early Southern Sapiens Behaviour exhibition is curated by filmmaker Craig Foster, best known for his Netflix docudrama, My Octopus Teacher, and archaeologist Petro Keene, from the Institute for Human Evolution at the University of the Witwatersrand. The objects on display are replicas and reconstructions, drawn from archaeological sites along the Southern Cape coast, including Blombos Cave, Klasies River, Klipdrift Shelter, and others. These sites, caves and middens are a treasure trove of artefacts, offering a continuous record of Homo sapiens behaviour, dating back more than 120,000 years.

Visitors will find engraved ochres, delicate shell beads, bone and stone tools, and even the remnants of ochre-processing “workshops.” Unlike simple crude survival tools, these artefacts represent thought, planning, concepts of symbolism, and aesthetic awareness; signs of the same cognitive capacities that shape our world today.

Blombos Cave and the Dawn of Symbolic Thought

Perhaps the most famous of the sites featured in the exhibition is Blombos Cave, that overlooks the Indian Ocean. Excavations here uncovered the world’s oldest known abstract engravings on ochre, cross-hatched designs carefully etched into red stone more than 70,000 years ago. Alongside this, shell beads were found, most likely strung together as ornaments, evidence of sophisticated tool-making. These finds challenged old assumptions.

For decades, anthropologists believed that modern symbolic behaviour, art, ritual, and language emerged around 40,000 years ago in Europe. Blombos pushed that timeline back by at least 30,000 years and relocated the birthplace of these concepts to Africa. The message of Blombos Cave was profound – the roots of what makes us human, were not sparked in Europe but along the windswept coast of South Africa.

A Shared Story

At the heart of the exhibition at De Hoop is the simple message – We Are All One. Genetic studies confirm that modern humans trace their ancestry to Africa. The symbolic artefacts unearthed and on display here are not just the heritage of South Africans, they are the shared inheritance of everyone alive today.

Standing in the gallery, looking at the etched lines of ochre or the hollowed-out shells, it was impossible not to feel a sense of kinship. These were people like us, and their behaviours and choices set us on the path toward modern language, art, religion, and culture.

Science in Partnership with Place

The exhibition is designed to run at De Hoop for an initial period of three years, supported by the De Hoop Collection, and its presence here feels particularly fitting. To leave the gallery and wander into the reserve’s landscapes, where bontebok graze, elands and zebra roam, and whales can be watched from the reserve’s sand dunes, gives a tangible sense of continuity between past and present.

A Journey Into Deep Time

Leaving the gallery and walking out into the late afternoon light, I looked beyond the lawns and whitewashed walls of the De Hoop Collection, beyond the shimmering vlei, filled with birdlife, towards the sand dunes in the distance. Somewhere out there, not so far from where I now stood, early Homo sapiens had once walked, gathered, carved, adorned, and dreamed. I thought again of the ochre in its glass case. Its incised lines were not just scratches; they were a statement, one that said ‘We are here’. And across the gulf of time, I thought, yes, we are still here. Still imagining. Still creating. Still connected to you.

The Origins of Early Southern Sapiens Behaviour exhibition at De Hoop is more than a museum display. It is an invitation to step back in time and see ourselves reflected in the lives of our ancestors.

Tell me more about the De Hoop Nature Reserve

The De Hoop Collection, the Hoop Nature Reserve, Overberg DC, 6740, South Africa

E:  info@dehoopcollection.co.za

T: +27 (0)21 4224522

Exhibition info and fees: Times – 9am, 11am, 1pm, 3pm daily (NB prior booking required via email: origins@dehoopcollection.co.za)

£8 / $11 USD (R200) per person (children under 18 are half price, and those under the age of 12 must be accompanied by an adult)