Hopefield
| Hopefield | |||
|---|---|---|---|
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| Coordinates | 33 ° 4 ′ S , 18 ° 21 ′ E | ||
| Basic data | |||
| Country | South Africa | ||
| Western cape | |||
| District | West coast | ||
| ISO 3166-2 | ZA toilet | ||
| local community | Saldanha Bay | ||
| Residents | 6460 (2011) | ||
| founding | 1844 | ||
 Dutch Reformed Church in Hopefield
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Hopefield is a small town in the municipality of Saldanha Bay , West Coast District , Western Cape Province in South Africa . It is on the R45 road, 120 kilometers north of Cape Town . In 2011 the population was 6,460.
The main sources of income are wheat cultivation and sheep breeding, and to a lesser extent in the wildflower season (August to October) tourism. The average rainfall is 300 mm per year.
history
The town was founded in 1844 on the area of the Lange Kuil farm on the banks of the Zoutrivier. The original name Zoute Rivier was changed to the current name Hopefield in 1853 in honor of the two officials Field and Hope who carried out the land survey for the city. The city was connected to the railway network in February 1903 with the Hopefield Railway .
Hopefield is the oldest city on the west coast of South Africa. Two of the farms on the outskirts are designated as national heritage sites .
Attractions
Elandsfontein is 13 kilometers outside the city . There is a site with archaeological finds of international importance. Since the excavations by Ronald Sänger from the University of Cape Town began in 1951, around 20,000 petrified bones and 5,000 human artifacts from the Early Stone Age (75,000 to 150,000 years old) have been found. These fossils show that this area was once a large swamp covered with lush vegetation that attracted many animals. The fossils include around 200 different types.
The most important discovery were fragments of the skull roof Saldanha 1 of an individual of the genus Homo ; this find became known as Saldanha Man or Hopefield Man . It was initially assigned a similar age to a skull Kabwe 1 discovered in 1921 in Broken Hill, then northern Rhodesia (now Kabwe in Zambia ) , which is why it was initially also referred to as Homo rhodesiensis . More recent dates attribute it to a much older age of 200,000 to 500,000 years and therefore assign it to the late African Homo erectus or Homo heidelbergensis .
