Page 18 - Bulletin 2 1998

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the area because the environments of the time favoured them. This was at the beginning of

the last Glacial (Ice Age in Europe.) As the sea level dropped in response to increased water
uptake (ice) at the poles, False Bay became a tract of well-watered grass and bush. (Fig. 1.6.)

Grazing antelope, such as wildebeest, hartebeest, bontebok, blue antelope, springbok,
mountain reed buck, eland, kudu, quaggas, giant Cape horse (zebra), African elephant,

hippopotamus, white rhinoceros and giant buffalo roamed. Hyrax, otter, baboon, aardvark
and a variety of large and small carnivores, including lion, leopard, Cape hunting dog and

brown hyaena also occurred in the region. Ostriches were common. Rare dolphin and seal

bones, and the existence of human sites with marine shellfish food debris in them, indicate
that the sea was not too far away at this time. Species, such as the giant horse, a giant

hartebeest and the giant buffalo, became extinct 10 – 12,000 years ago by the beginning of

the following period, the Holocene.

The last Glacial also saw the development by modern people of the more sophisticated
technological complex known as the Later Stone Age, from about 30,000 years ago, although

we have not yet been able to recognize the earliest evidence for this around False Bay. It is
possible, however, that one of the caves on Trappies Kop at Kalk Bay holds the key to this.

The so-called Fish Hoek ‘Man’, from Peer’s Cave, has been dated to about 12,000 years ago.

Holocene Epoch (10,000 years ago to present)

Subsequently, the only major change in sea level appears to have been a short rise of 1 – 3 m

between 5,000 and 7,000 years ago, which probably breached low-lying coastal areas. With
minor variations from time to time, climate and environment would, however, have been

essentially the same as now. Fauna and flora would have been the same as recorded

historically.

Scatters of stone artefacts in the Fish Hoek and Noordhoek valleys include the Wilton

Industry of the Later Stone Age, which developed about 8,000 years ago. Important
archaeological features of the present coast are the shell middens or refuse heaps, in the open