SOUTH AFRICAN MUSEUM & PLANETARIUM
Remarkable museum, the oldest in sub-Saharan Africa, housing important collections of archaeology and paleontology.
Founded in 1825, this museum is the oldest in sub-Saharan Africa. Young and old alike will be seduced by the large marine mammals section, whose main attraction is a 20 m long blue whale skeleton, or the large dinosaur skeletons and the only stuffed quagga in the world. This species of Karoo zebra disappeared to general indifference in 1883, after the death of its last representative in an Amsterdam zoo.
The most exciting section of the exhibition is dedicated to the Bushmen. Taking note of the reservations expressed by the museum's current scientific team, you can admire the astonishing casts made in 1911. They look like living beings! That's the problem, because these casts were made by the museum's taxidermists on living individuals, supposedly representing "perfect savages".
Southern Africa is the richest region in the world in terms of rock paintings. Thousands of sites are listed, most of them inaccessible to the uninformed public. Fortunately, the authorities are gradually becoming aware of the importance of presenting and protecting this fabulous heritage. Imagine that the oldest paintings, discovered on rocks in the Apollo 11 cave in Namibia, are the work of artists who lived 27,000 years before our era, a hundred centuries before the painters of Lascaux! Constellation lovers, head to the Planetarium.
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