Plett Arts Festival 2024
The Africa Alive Corridors Project
Africa Alive Corridors (AAC) project and our Homo Sapiens Corridor: Cradle of our species & emergence of our culture
The AAC project aims to tell the c.4 billion year holistic biography of Africa (the Mother continent)—geologically, biologically, culturally—along a selection of 20 Heritage Corridors. These criss-cross the continent covering all 50 or so countries; and each includes 20 Heritage Nodes. The project, initiated by Dr John Anderson & Prof Maarten de Wit in 2013, evolved from their “Towards Gondwana Alive; Promoting biodiversity & stemming the Sixth Extinction” (1999) volume.
The ultimate aim is that all persons across the continent get to know their deep background and feel to be co-custodians of our uniquely rich irreplaceable heritage. Our very own local Corridor is the Homo Sapiens Corridor - Cradle of our species & emergence of our culture, tracking our 200,000 year epic journey. This corridor stretches from the West Coast to the Wild Coast, with Nelson Bay Cave & Klasies River Mouth as vital heritage nodes in our very own human story. Let’s celebrate, share and protect Plettenberg Bay and our Cape coastline which showcases our ancient human story best globally!
A 30 minute presentation followed by Q&A
Why not book for lunch at the Kwendalo Green Cafe after the talk? 044 004 0366 or Whatsapp 063 669 8006
ABOUT DR JOHN ANDERSON
Dr John Malcolm Anderson was born in London on 28 June, 1943, in the middle of World War II. His family emigrated to South Africa shortly after the war, in 1947. His parents both had doctorates, his dad in bacteriology and his mom in zoology. He feels strongly attached to both the sciences and the arts, hopping between his two cerebral hemispheres, between these two sides of life.
His formal education, school and university, all occurred in Johannesburg. At the Witwatersrand Univ., he earned a BSc (geology major) in 1965, a BSc Hons in 1967 (Palaeontology, 1st class), and a PhD in 1976 (Palaeobotany). During his university career, he became a very active member of the Mountain Club, spending most weekends out in the Magaliesberg and other venues. This led him to plot the distribution of the Transvaal trees, and finally to producing a book on the trees of the Witwatersrand with the artist Joan van Gogh.
He then worked as a Palaeobotanist at the Botanical Institute in Pretoria, which later became known as SANBI, for most of his formal career. He is now an Hon. Prof. linked to the Mandela Univ. in Port Elizabeth. He is a great devotee of nature, and was an early advocate in the 80s and 90s for working towards stemming the Sixth Extinction—having written a couple of books and many articles on and around the subject.
With his first wife, Heidi, he spent his adult lifetime collecting fossil plants from the Molteno Fm. (100 sites) in the Karoo, on which they have now published eight volumes. Whereas we now live in the heyday of the angiosperms (flower-bearing plants), the Molteno (mid-Triassic, dated to c.23 million years) has proved to pinpoint the heyday of the gymnosperms (cone-bearing plants). He founded the Gondwana Alive Society in 1998, and the first edition of ‘Towards Gondwana Alive’ (TGA) was published in 1999.
John and long-time colleague and geologist Prof. Maarten de Wit then launched their ‘Africa Alive’ Project at UNESCO’s International Year of Planet Earth symposium in Arusha, Tanzania in 2008. The Gondwana Alive organisation was registered as an NPO in 2009. In 2022, the Earth Alive organisation was also formally registered as an NPO to develop further conservation, earth history and eco-tourism projects (also with his daughter, Hilary Anderson). With his two daughters, four grandchildren and the state of our world fundamentally in mind, he remains daily devoted to completing two current volumes: “Africa Alive Corridors” and “Journey through Earth Time”, under Gondwana and Earth Alive – and there is much to follow!
