Discovering the Oldest Man-made Structures on EarthIn the Cradle of Humankind
by Michael Tellinger - MaKomati Foundation 
Posted: 15:30 January 21, 2009
Founder of Adam's Calendar, Johan Heine, examines the carved edge on the leading monolith which casts a clear shadow on the flat calendar rock. The wider monolith became the calendar on which days and weeks were marked as the movement of the sun stretched perfectly from one edge to the other, left to right, and than back again. |
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.
Johan Heine manages the largest group of fire fighters and fire fighting fleet of aircraft in Africa. As a pilot he has been flying over the mountains of Mpumalanga for over 20 years. He instantly took a keen interest and started photographing thousands of strange circular stone ruins that lie scattered throughout this region. After consulting various so-called experts on their origins he was informed that these were merely remains of "cattle kraal" left behind by the migrating Bantu people from the north in the 14th century until about the 18th century. But it was an almost fatal air crash by one of his crew that brought him to discover the mysterious monolithic circle we now call Adam's Calendar and put the entire mystery of these ancient ruins into perspective.
Johan spotted the strange monoliths standing upright in the centre of a larger eroded circular structure, right on the edge of a high mountain cliff. After dealing with the crashed aircraft and recovering the pilot who only suffered a broken arm, Johan returned to investigate the monoliths. This is when he truly discovered how amazingly blind, 'those who will not see' can be. He brought about 5 academics to the site in search of explanations, but not one of them could see the true significance of the discovery, claiming that these were just random stones.
This was a big blow to his original excitement but like a true explorer he did not stop there.
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.
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