HOMO SHILOWUS SEES TOURIST'S BUCK IN HANDYMAN'S BONY GLARE



If the history of the world were an arm, the Harvard palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould once said, human history could be eliminated with a single flick of a nailfile. If you chewed the nail instead, perhaps you'd get down to the shard that represents Mrs Ples, a distant cousin of humankind, discovered in the Sterkfontein eaves just north of Krugersdorp in 1947.

She's about two-and-a-half million years old, otherwise known as Australopithecus africanus, and is now just a tiny-brained skull, copies of which were passed round generously as gifts this week to those who occupy the hearth of power today. "I have a dream that every school in the country should have a copy of Mrs Ples," said Dr Francis Thackeray of the Transvaal Museum, as he handed Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa, his own take-home skull.

It was a day when politics met science and everyone scrambled up a rung on the evolutionary ladder. Or, if you eschew the "ladder" theory in favour of the "bush" one, which holds that several species of our ancestral cousins were around at the same time, our shrub grew another bud.

The occasion was the visit by Shilowa, his MEC for agriculture and conservation, Mary Metcalfe, and others in his cabinet to the Sterkfontein caves. The area, known as the cradle of humankind, is up for world heritage site status. The politicians are happy because they can deliver development to the area, most landowners are happy because there will be a limit to that development, the scientists are happy because this treasure trove of old bones will be protected.

The only people who aren't happy are a small group who protested outside the lodge where the more felicitous had gathered for lunch. They want a casino and their protest temporarily drew Shilowa and Metcalfe back into the more mundane world of local politics. "No World Heritage Site Without a Casino" read one of their posters. Shilowa and Metcalfe stopped to speak to them. They both patiently explained that the gambling board grants casino licences, while the world heritage committee grants - well, world heritage sites. And later, more impatiently - he did not have all of human time in front of him: "We are not a debating society. We are a government." Then he hopped into his BMW, leaving Metcalfe to explain why a world heritage site would mean more tourists who would need "a place to stay, to have lunch, someone to show them around".

It was a more relaxed Shilowa I saw at an exhibition table later examining three copies of the skulls of the first hominids with our own star palaeontologist Phillip Tobias. Tobias explained that Mrs Ples, her successor Australopithecus robustus, and what was probably the first man - homo habilis - were three different species. At least two were around at the same time. Neither Mrs Ples, nor robustus survived, going the way of 95 percent of all other creatures who've ever lived. "Extinction is the rule," he explained. "Evolution the exception."

The distinguishing feature of homo habilis was probably not the size of his brain, but that he used his hands. The name literally means handyman. Perhaps the casino lobby knew this. Playing a hand suddenly took on a whole new meaning, here in humankind's cradle at the fingertip of history.

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