By John Yeld
The future of Baboon Point at Elands Bay will be decided at a meeting of Heritage Western Cape on Thursday.
Archaeologists rate Baboon Point among the most important cultural-historical sites on the African coastline and have described it as "priceless".
The full council of the heritage body will vote on the unanimous recommendations of two of its committees to proclaim the property a formal provincial heritage site in terms of heritage legislation.
'In short, Baboon Point is a site of rare archaeological significance' The site is under threat of development, with a proposal to build 75 houses on various parts of it.
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Exactly one year ago, Heritage Western Cape placed the Baboon Point properties and two adjoining erven owned by the department of public works under provisional protection in terms of the National Heritage Resources Act, pending a full assessment of the heritage significance of the area.
The assessment noted that recent archaeological research in the Elands Bay area, and at Baboon Point in particular, had unravelled "a millennia-long dynamic history of changing settlement patterns".
These date back from the early beginnings of anatomically modern humans - the Middle Stone Age, about 120 000 years ago - through to the development of various phases of indigenous cultural developments of hunter-gatherer populations in the Later Stone Age.
These later developments include the expression of rock art in the Elands Bay Cave at Baboon Point and the emergence of the herder way of life of the various Khoi tribes during the past 2 000 years.
Later culturally and historically important developments at Baboon Point include the building of a radar station in World War 2.
Archaeologists have told the council that Baboon Point hosted the greatest concentration of heritage resources of any site along the Western Cape coastline.
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