United Nations recognises three conservation projects as new World Restoration Flagships.

The United Nations has recognised three conservation projects as World Restoration Flagships, according to a press release issued by the United Nations Environment Program on 4 December 2025. World Restoration Flagships are projects intended to have large-scale and long-term impacts, held up as examples which embody the 10 Restoration Principles of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030). World Restoration Flagships already cover an area of over 10 million km², an area larger than China.

The first new project recognised is the Shellfish Reef Building Program in Australia. This project, a partnership between the Nature Conservancy and the Australian Government, aims to restore reefs of Oysters and Mussels which were once found around much of the southern coast of Australia but which have been greatly depleted by over-harvesting, sedimentation and pollution.

Globefish amongst Mussels and restored shellfish reef in Dromana, Port Phillip Bay. Jarrod Boord/Streamline Media in Reef Builder (2024).

Since its inception in 2020, the Reef Builder Program has worked with local communities to restore reefs at thirteen locations along the southern coastline of Australia; it aims to restore 30% of Australia's original shellfish reefs by 2030. The project has generated over 425 jobs, and about US$10 million in income for over 50 small and medium sized businesses, as well as helping local communities to reconnect to nature and promote stewardship over the natural environment.

The second project recognised is the Respectful Returns Initiative in Canada, a partnership between Parks Canada and local and Indigenous communities, which aims to restore damaged rivers and streams in seven national parks along Canada’s Pacific and Atlantic coasts. 

Salmon being released into the Bay of Fundy as part of the Respectful Returns Initiative. Parks Canada.

Since its initiation in 2010, the Respectful Returns Initiative has restored over 650 km² of land and 228 km of waterways, created over 100 jobs, supported research projects by three universities, and formed partnerships with 32 local organisations and community groups. The Salmon population has increased at six of the seven locations where the Initiative works. The Initiative aims to both protect Salmon and to strengthen the connection between the population and their environment. 

The third project recognised is the Thicket Restoration Movement in South Africa, a collaboration uniting over 60 initiatives in Eastern and Western Cape provinces, which aims to restore over 8000 km² of indigenous subtropical thicket by 2030.

Replanting a Kuzuko Thicket in South Africa. AfriCarbon. 

These thickets serve as a grazing resource for both wild Mammals and livestock, particularly under drought conditions, which is an important consideration following the drought of 2023/4, which is the worst the region has suffered in over 100 years. It is a particularly important resource for threatened species such as Black Rhinoceros and African Bush Elephant, and is also a significant carbon reserve, with soils covered by thicket retaining notably more carbon than exposed soils. It is estimated that restoring these thickets sequesters around eight million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. The project is also predicted to directly create over 1000 jobs in rural communities, as well as improving the lives of around two million people.

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The Nqweba Bolide and Meteorite Fall Event.

It is thought that more than a hundred tons of cosmic debris enters the Earth's atmosphere every day, mostly in the form of micrometeorites, dust-to-gravel sized particles. Most particles entering the upper atmosphere are derived from the tails of comets, but others are remnants of the original protoplanetary disc from which the Solar System formed, or fragments from the surface of other planets or moons, knocked free by earlier impacts. When these objects enter the atmosphere, they generally do so at very high velocities, causing them to heat rapidly as they pass through the atmosphere, and causing their surfaces to melt and the surrounding gasses to ionise. This can result in a bright streak across the sky called a meteor.

Larger bodies penetrate further into the atmosphere, burning longer and brighter, with those a few tens of centimetres in diameter producing meteors brighter in the sky than the planet Venus, which are termed 'fireballs'. Particularly large fireballs can sometimes be seen to visibly disinitegrate, and are known as bolides. The break up of such bolides is often audible from the ground, although, since they are typically tens of kilometres high, the sound typically reaches observers some time after the visible meteor, which can be confusing.

In a paper published in the South African Journal of Science on 29 May 2025, Roger Gibson of the School of Geosciences at the University of the Witwatersrand, Timothy Cooper of the Comet Asteroid and Meteor Section of the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa, Leonidas Vonopartis, also of the School of Geosciences at the University of the Witwatersrand, Carla Dodd of the Department of Geosciences and Institute for Coastal and Marine Research at Nelson Mandela University, Peter Hers of the Garden Route Centre of the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa, and Lewis Ashwal and Robyn Symons, once again of the School of Geosciences at the University of the Witwatersrand, describe a bolide event which took place over the coastal belt between Mossel Bay and Gqeberha, and as far north as the southern Karoo, on 25 August 2024.

Slightly before 9.00 am on Sunday 25 August 2024, residents of the area between Mossel Bay and Gqeberha and the southern Karoo heard a noise described as like rolling thunder which persisted for more than 30 seconds, despite the sky being clear of thunderclouds. Some residents of this area also reported ground tremors.

This provoked a great deal of speculation on social media, with people hypothesizing an earthquake, landslide, vehicle collision, aircraft crash, gas or electrical infrastructure explosion, or other events. At 9.02 am, Zoë van der Merwe of Cape St Francis posted a a cluster of rapidly moving, bright, silver-white fireballs in the sky that extinguished within seconds in the general vicinity of Gqeberha.

Selected frame-by-frame analysis of Zoë van der Merwe’s video (reproduced with permission) showing the bolide post-disruption phase with multiple secondary fragments flaring individually over about two seconds before entering dark flight. Gibson et al. (2025).

There is currently a global effort to better understand atmospheric fireball events, involving organisations in many different parts of the world. In Southern Africa, the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa maintains a database of fireball events, with a dedicated webpage where members of the public can report events. They also actively seek out reports of fireballs on social media, and quickly became aware of Zoë van der Merwe's post, and other reports of the Nqweba event, leading them to share reporting guidelines on social media groups. They also received reports of a bulletin on Luister FM, a radio station based in Port Elizabeth, which stated that a meteorite had been observed falling into the sea off the Eastern Cape at around 8.55 am.

Armed with these sources of data, they set out to determine whether the observed objects were in fact derived from a Solar System body, rather than being Human-made space junk re-entering the atmosphere. This is less complex than it sounds, as space junk will typically enter the atmosphere at a low angle and with a slow velocity, most often as a series of such events as debris from the same object falls to Earth. The Nqweba object did not fit this profile, and its occurrence did not coincide with any known satellite debris re-entering the atmosphere, making unlikely that it was space junk.

Initial reports all suggested that the bolide was moving out to sea, possibly splashing down in Jeffreys Bay, to the west of Gqeberha. As more reports came in it became it had been seen over a much wider area, north as far as Petrusburg, and west as far as Ceres. A further three videos of the object emerged, although the one taken by Zoë van der Merwe appears to cover the final part of the meteor's journey.

Shortly before 9.00 am, residents of Nqweba (formerly Kirkwood), about 100 km to the north of Cape St Francis, heard what they described as a loud thunderclap, followed by a long rumbling noise. Slightly after this, 9-year-old Eli-zé du Toit observed something falling through a large Wild Fig tree in her parents garden. When investigated, this turned out to be a rock smaller than her fist, with a shiny black crust, broken in places to reveal a light grey, concrete-like interior. When touched, the exterior layer of this rock was hot, while the interior was cold. Eli-zé's mother, Jesica Botha, posted several images of this and other fragments found in the garden to social media groups, leading to her being contacted by Carla Dodd of Nelson Mandela University.

(a) Photo of main meteorite mass retrieved by Eli-zé du Toit, displaying black fusion crust (top) and the grey interior containing multiple angular rock and mineral fragments. (b) Post submitted by Jesica Botha on the Snow Report Southern Africa Facebook page. Gibson et al. (2025).

Carla Dodd was able to arrange for the meteorite fragments to be transported to Nelson Mandela University for safekeeping; meteorites, along with fossils and archaeological artefacts are protected in South Africa by the National Heritage Resources Act (1999). Here the fragments were weighed, examined and placed into desiccators for storage. This preliminary inspction suggested that the fragments belonged to a type of stoney meteorite called a HED (howardite–eucrite–diogenite) achondrite breccia. These meteorites resemble terrestrial igneous rocks, and are therefore presumed to have come from bodies large enough for magma differentiation and igneous processing to have occurred.

Initial witness reports, and the two sites where meteors were reported to have fallen to Earth, Nqweba and the sea off Cape St Francis, are about 100 km apart, suggesting that the bolide had followed a north-south trajectory, shedding fragments as it went, towards the sea. However, bolides are notoriously confusing for observers, due to the long gap between the visual fireball and the sound reaching witnesses. Careful examination of witness reports and data from remote observation stations eventually led Gibson et al. to conclude that the bolide moved southwest-to-northeast, first appearing off Mossel Bay and moving inland towards Nqweba.

The Nqweba Bolide was the 20th bolide recorded globally in 2024, and one of the smallest. It is thought to have been about 1 m in diameter when it entered the atmosphere, and to have released energy equivalent to that released by the detonation of 92 tons of TNT.

Since 1992, 493 fireball events have been recorded over South Africa, only about 3% of which have been visible during the day. The largest recorded bolide in Southern Africa was the 21 November 2009 event over northern South Africa and southern Botswana, which was probably about 200 times as large as the Nqweba Bolide, although no fragments of this were ever found.

Recovered meteorites in South Africa are strongly linked to observed meteorites, and particularly daytime events, with 21 of 51 known meteorites collected in South Africa connected to observed falls, 75% of these in the daytime. However, prior to the Nqweba Bolide,  the most recent of these fell on Lichtenburg, North West Province, in 1973, long before modern technology such as remote observation stations and mobile phones was available to help track these events.

South Africa is currently increasing its remote observation capacity, and therefore its ability to track fireballs.  It is currently home to 16 cameras running under the auspices of the NASA SETI Institute Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance network, and a further ten operated by the Global Meteor Network (4 of which have been installed in Western Cape schools to promote STEM activities). These are already improving fireball-detection rates, but do not work well in daylight. The collection of meteorite fragments is largely dependent on direct observation of the objects falling, as was the case with the Nqweba Meteorite Fall, but networks of cameras can help triangulate the area in which meteorites might have fallen, improving the chances of finding meteorites which were not directly observed.

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Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene faunal remains from the Waterfall Bluff Rock Shelter in the Mpondoland region of Eastern Cape Province, South Africa.

A number of coastal archaeological sites across Southern Africa provide an excellent record of faunal and Hominin interactions during Pleistocene interglacial periods and the Holocene, but a much poorer record of the same during glacial periods, when sealevels were lower, with the effect that most coastal settlements during these intervals would be below modern sealevels. The Waterfall Bluff Rock Shelter in the Mpondoland region of Eastern Cape Province, appears to be an exception to this, with an archaeological record which begins during Marine Isotope Stage 3 (roughly 39 000 to 29 000 years ago) to the Early Holocene (about 8000 years ago), and includes the Last Glacial Maximum, and the glacial/interglacial transition at the end of the Pleistocene. This site has yielded the remains of Fish, Shelfish, and Marine Mammals, which demonstrate that the hunter-gatherer populations using the rock shelter were utilizing coastal resources even during the Last Glacial Maximum.

In a paper published in the South African Journal of Science on 4 December 2024, Sandee Oster and Jerome Reynard of the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Hayley Cawthra of the African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience at Nelson Mandela University, and the Minerals and Energy Unit at the South African Council for Geoscience, Irene Esteban, also of the African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience at Nelson Mandela University, and of the Archaeological and Archaeometric Research Unit and Institute of Archaeology at the University of Barcelona, Justin Pargeter of the Department of Anthropology at New York University, and the Rock Art Research Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, and Erich Fisher, again of the African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience at Nelson Mandela University, and of the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, the Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and the Evolution of Human Behavior at the University of Algarve, and the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, present a preliminary analysis of the fauna at the Waterfall Bluff Rock Shelter, and discuss the implications of this for the local palaeoenvironmental and palaeoecological conditions, and how this would have affected the subsistence activities of hunter-gatherer populations in the area.

Eastern Mpondoland, defined as the area between the mouths of the Mthatha and Umtamvuna rivers, has a diverse landscape with a number of deeply incised plateaus, and areas of sourveld grassland, forest vegetation and bushveld, with patches of Southern Coastal Forest, Southern Mistbelt Forest and Scarp Forest. This area has a diverse fauna including woodland species such as bushbuck, Tragelaphus scriptus, Blue Duiker, Philantomba monticola, and Grey Rhebok, Pelea capreolus, grassland species such as Southern Reedbuck, Redunca arundinum, Oribi, Ourebia ourebi, and Bontebok, Damaliscus pygargus,  as well as mixed environment species such as Eland, Tragelaphus oryx.

Waterfall Bluff Rock Shelter is located 24 m above sealevel, close to the Mlambomkulu River Waterfall. It has yielded an assemblage of lithic tools, predominantly made from hornfels (metamorphically altered sandstone), as well as Plant remains which have been used to demonstrate that all the vegatation types found in the area have been present since the End Pleistocene. More than 17 000 items have been recovered from the site to date, including tools, Plant, and Animal remains.

Two broad stratigraphic layers, termed Stratigraphic Aggregates, or 'StratAggs', have been determined from the rock shelter. These are somewhat homogenised internally, but apparently distinct from one-another. The oldest is the Light Brown Coarse Sands, which has been dated to between 37 600 and 12 500 years before the present. Overlying this is the Shell-Rich Clayey Sands, dated to between 11 000 and 10 500 years before the present, both of which can be sub-divided into a number of discrete sub-units, termed sub-Stratigraphic Aggregates, or 'SubAggs'.

The ages and locations of SubAggs at Waterfall Bluff. Oster et al. (2024).

The material used in Oster et al.'s study was excavated in 2016 under permit from the Eastern Cape Provincial Heritage Resources Authority, and with the support of King Zanozuko Tyelovuyo Sigcau, Nkosi Mthuthuzeli Mkwedini, and the Lambasi AmaMpondo community. Specimens were compared to reference material in the collection of the Ditsong National Museum. Where Bovid remains could not be identified they were split into four size classes, with (1) being the smallest, and including species such as Oribi, and (4) is the largest, including species such as Eland. Where the species could be determined, ungulates were categorised as grazers, browsers or mixed feeders.

The majority of the specimens came from the Early Holocene Shell-Rich Clayey Sands, with a smaller amount from the Late Pleistocene Light Brown Coarse Sands. The majority of the material was extremely fragmentary, typically less than 2 cm on the longest dimension. About 10% of the material showed signs of Human modification, such as cut or percussion marks, though only one of these modified bones could be assigned to species level, a charred astragalus with cut marks from the Early Holocene determined to come from a Blue Duiker.

The most common Animals in the sample were Bovids (the group that includes Antelopes), while the most easily identifiable remains were those of Rock Hyraxes, Procavia capensis. A single Seal-tooth was found in a Pleistocene layer dated to between 22 560 and 19 430 years before the present. This was determined to have come from a Leopard Seal, Hydrurga leptonyx, a species which today is found on Antarctic and sub-Antarctic islands, and the waters which surround these, although occasional visitors to South Africa are recorded. The presence of such a tooth in a Pleistocene layer at the Waterfall Bluff Rock Shelter could imply that during this period, when sea temperatures would have been about 3° lower that today, Leopard Seal colonies were found further north, on the South African coast, or simply that individuals occasionally visited the area, as they do today. Three Seal bone specimens were also found, a vertebra and two bone fragments, from both the Pleistocene and Holocene layers, although these could not be identified more precisely.

Leopard Seal tooth from Waterfall Bluff Rock Shelter (#CN47208, Lot 303). Oster et al. (2024).

Only two Bovid specimens could be identified from the Late Pleistocene deposits, a Common Duiker, which is an obligate woodland species, and an Eland, which is environmentally adaptable. No obligate grassland species could be identified, but with the very small sample size, it would be problematic to place much emphasis on this.

Both Fish and Seal remains were found in Late Pleistocene layers along with marine Shelfish and possible Barnacle fragments, suggesting that the area was within practical range of the coast even during periods of glaciation. This is not completely surprising as the coastal shelf is narrow on this part of the coast (i.e. at the edge of the continental shelf the seafloor is steep, so that the sealevel can drop a long way vertically without moving far horizontally), although even at this time it was probably about 8 km from the rock shelter.

In the Early Holocene, Bushbuck and Reedbuck were both common. Since these species favour riverine environments, suggesting that the Mlambomkulu River had continued to run at this time; this supports earlier findings of incisions on the (now submerged) continental shelf, which also support the presence of a river. Reedbuck also favour grassland environments, as do African Buffalo and Bontebok/Blesbok, which were also fairly common in the Holocene layers, suggesting a grassland environment was definitely present by this time. The presence of Blue Duiker and Vervet Monkeys, which are obligate woodland species, indicate that woodland was still present, hinting at an environment not much different from today.

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Potamonautes amathole: A new species of Freshwater Crab from the montane forests of Eastern Cape Province, South Africa.

The Potamonautidae are a group of Freshwater Crabs found across Africa and its associated islands. In South Africa, this group is represented by 26 species divided into two genera, Potamonautes and Maritimonautes, although this is likely to be an underestimate, as the group is known to contain numerous cryptic species, which resemble one-another closely, but are reproductively isolated and can generally only be identified by genetic analysis. A number of these Crabs have recently been described from forests in South Africa, an environment which covers only 0.4% of the country's land area, but which is it's most biodiverse by area. The two largest remaining patches of forests in South Africa are Knysna and Amathole, the latter of which is found in the Amathole Mountain Range, part of the Great Escarpment of South Africa.

In a paper published in the journal ZooKeys on 4 May 2023, Nasreen Peer of the Department of Botany and Zoology at Stellenbosch University, Gavin Gouws of the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity, Lazola Maliwa of the Albany Museum, Nigel Barker and Paul Juby of the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences at the University of Pretoria, and Renzo Perissinotto of the Institute for Coastal & Marine Research at Nelson Mandela University, describe a new species of Potamonautid Crab from the Hogsback and Katberg forests in the Amathole Mountains of Eastern Cape Province.

The new species is placed in the genus Potamonautes, and given the specific name amathole, in reference to the Amathole Mountains, to which the species appears to be endemic; in isiXhosa the term  'amathole' means 'calves', and is used to refer to the mountain range, the forest, and municipal district. The species is distinguished by a smooth carapace and a highly arched major claw.

Potamonautes amathole male holotype (MB-A094813) in (a) dorsal view and (b) ventral view. Peer et al. (2023).

Genetically, Potamonautes amathole was found to be closely related to the small-bodied montane Freshwater Crabs of the Cape Fold Mountains in Western Cape Province (which are also associated with the Great Escarpment); it represents the first member of this group from the Eastern Cape.

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Analyzing the contents of a 500-year-old medicine horn from Eastern Cape Province, South Africa.

The discovery of organic residues in or on ancient artifacts presents exciting opportunities for archaeologists. Analysis of such residues has suggested purposes as cosmetics, adhesives, medicines and even poisons, with the majority apparently derived from Plants. The earliest organic residues date from about 200 000 years ago, and apparently reflect Plants chosen for the Insect-repellent smoke they produced when burned,. This marks the beginning of a long history of Humans utilizing the chemical properties of Plants, which has enabled us to move out of Africa and colonise every continent except Antarctica. The oldest of these studied residues come from Southern Africa, where we have a record of Human Plant usage spanning almost the entire history of our species, and including a wide range of uses, though, surprisingly, including very few residues associated with medicines.

Traditional African medicine is still widely used on the continent, and is heavily dependent on Plants, something which was recorded by the earliest European visitors to the continent, and which therefore was probably the case long before their arrival. Unfortunately, from an anthropological point of view, traditional African medicine practitioners are flexible and adaptable in their approach to Plant selection, and today use many Plants imported from other parts of the world, something which makes it hard to assess which Plants might have been used in medicine in the remote past. This is complicated by the fact that not all traditional medicines are effective, with only 33 of the 166 Plants used in traditional medicine in Eastern Cape Province today having been shown to have pharmacological effects. This is not simply a sign of incompetence on the behalf of the practitioners of this medicine, but rather a slightly different perspective on how Plants are used, with much medicine being used to protect against, or treat the effects of, harmful magic rather than disease.

The lack of archaeological evidence makes it hard to assess how old modern traditional medicine practices are, and how (or if) they have changed over time. The remains of Plants which would be considered to have medicinal properties today have been found associated with archaeological sites dating back to the Middle Stone Age in South Africa (i.e. more than 130 000 years old), although it not possible to say if they were being used for medicinal purposes, or how they were used if they that was their purpose.

In a paper published in the South African Journal of Science on 31 January 2023, Justin Bradfield of the Palaeo-Research Institute at the Universityof Johannesburg, Stephan Woodborne of iThemba LABS, Jeremy Hollmann of the Rock Art Research Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, and Ian Dubery of the Research Centre for PlantMetabolomics and the Departmentof Biochemistry at the University of Johannesburg, describe a 500-year-old medicine horn found in a rock shelter on a farm in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, the results of an analysis of its contents.

The horn was discovered on a farm called La vie D’Antan, in the Langkloof Mountains, about 40 km to the north of Plettenberg Bay, and about 40 km to the east of Uniondale. The object is a Cattle horn sealed with  leaves, which contained a solid residue, thought likely to have been a liquid or gel when the horn was deposited, due to its orientation. This residue was readily soluble, making it suitable for gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis.

The horn container after excavation (large inset) and at two stages of the recovery of the parcel: (A) the parcel tightly bundled with Boophane disticha leaves and grass, wrapped together with plant fibre rope and (B) partially unwrapped exposing the horn container. (C) and (D) The location of the rock shelter on the farm La vie D’Antan. Bradfield et al. (2023).

The site from which the horn was recovered is a rock shelter with rock art, about 3 m high and cutting 3 m deep into the conglomerate Enon Formation. The shelter has a shallow floor deposit, which is only a few centimetres thick, within which the horn had been deposited. The horn was discovered after apparently being exposed by Animal activity, and removed by a passer-by to prevent further damage. It was sealed with a bundle of Century Plant, Boophane disticha, leaves and Grass, which were attached to the horn by a twisted Plant-fibre rope. The leaves of the Century Plant are known to have antiseptic properties, which may have helped to preserve the horn and its contents; the same leaves were used to bind the 2000-year-old Kouga Mummy, which was discovered about 10 km from the La vie D'Antan site. The site also produced a few shards of ceramic, but no signs of ever having been occupied, The area around the site contained numerous Everlasting Plants, Helichrysum spp., and Ragworts, Senecio spp., both of which are sometimes used to make teas in Southern Africa.

The rock shelter is within a conglomerate made up of sandstone boulders, which is covered by between 20 and 30 paintings, executed in red and yellow ochre paints, apparently made with a brush (with the exception of some handprints), and depicts Human figures armed with hunting equipment, and a range of Animals, most of which are hard to identify, but which include at least one Eland and one Antelope. This art is fairly typical of the San people who occupied the region before being largely driven out by Dutch settlers in the late eighteenth century; similar art has been found at two other rock shelters within 2 km of the site.

Examples of rock art from La vie D’Antan and neighbouring sites. Images have been digitally enhanced using colour deconvolution. The original colour is a red hue. Bradfield et al. (2023).

Prior to the eighteenth century, the area was occupied by hunter gatherers who belonged to the San ethnic group, and pastoralists from the Khoi ethnic group, who typically owned large herds of Sheep and Cattle. By 1775 much of the land had been partitioned among Dutch settlers, with the few remaining Inqua Khoi largely being employed as herdsmen on Dutch owned farms. A mixed population, descended from San and Khoi refugees and deserters from the Dutch army (which included non-European conscripts from colonies in Africa and Asia) may have survived in the mountains as late as the 1880s, but the last independent San bands disappeared in the 1760s. Little is known about this hunter gatherer population, though they were resident in the area for at least 10 000 years, and used a technology which modern archaeologists classify as Later Stone Age.

The Kouga Mummy was found about 10 km from the La vie D'Antan rockshelter, and comprises a man aged between 30 and 40 and thought to be a member of the San ethnic group due to his stature, and dated to about 1930 years before the present. The Mummy was wrapped in the leaves of a Century Plant, and covered with a mass of twigs and branches, which may have formed a burial basket. Within the leaf-bindings were found some Century Plant bulbs, as well as some beads made from marine shells. The feet of the Mummy had been bound, and the last joint of the left little finger removed, both burial customs known to have been practiced by some San societies. The burial site was covered by a painted stone slab.

The Kouga Mummy. Albany Museum.

The use of horns as medicine containers is fairly common across Africa as a whole, but somewhat unusual in Southern Africa, where the shells of Tortoises or the eggs of Ostriches have been the favoured traditional containers. A number of Cattle horn snuff containers attributed to Sotho or Shona makers are housed in the collection of the British Museum, but these date from the nineteenth century. The Harvard Peabody Museum has similar containers, reportedly from southern Tanzania or northern Zimbabwe, but again from the nineteenth century. Bradfield et al. also note having found reference to a medicine horn collected in the Belgian Congo between 1890 and 1930, on which they could find no further information, possibly in reference to this specimen from the Welcome Collection. They also note that some San groups living in the Kalahari use horns to store medicine, as do the Bemba of Zimbabwe, althought the Kalahari San generally use Duiker horns to store medicine used against witchcraft, while the Bemba use  a variety of Antelope horns, including Duiker and Bushbuck, 

Bradfield et al. first examined the contents of the horn under a light microscope, finding a mixture of Insect and Plant remains in the surface layer. The majority of the Insect remains could not be identified with any confidence, but were not inconsistent with having come from Dermestid Beetles (Skin Beetles) a group which are known to have been attacking the Horn and its contents when it was found, though some scales of Lepidopteran Insect (Butterfly or Moth) wings were also found. Beneath the surface the residue contained no Insect or Plant remains, and comprised a shiny brown crystalline substance which dissolved readily in water and smells faintly of Liquorice. 

Micrographs showing (A) Insect epithelial tissue; the glossy, reflective surface and absence of visible phytolith structures under ultraviolet light suggest Insect origin rather than Plant; (B), (C) elongated tissue structure, possible Plant tracheids; (D) fragment of an Insect wing; (E)–(G) Lepidoptera wing scales; (H)–(K) probable Insect setae; (L), (M) crystalline-looking fragments of the tacky main container residue; and (N), (O) the solute of the tacky residue after dissolving in water. Note the absence of other obvious tissue structures. Bradfield et al. (2023).

Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis of the brown residue revealed it to be a mixture of organic compounds, with the largest proportion being mono-methyl inositol and its isomers, as well as lupeol, and lesser amounts of  di- and tri-terpenes, a sterol derivative and fatty acid methyl ester. Curiously, no volatile aromatic associated with a Liquorice smell was found.

Inositol is a natural polysaccharide sugar synthesized in plant cells and used in the production of plasma lipo-proteins to aid cell growth. It is produced by a range of Plants, including Legumes and Citrus fruits, and used in medicines used to control diabetes, and treat  high cholesterol, bronchopulmonary dysplasia and various mood disorders, as well as to reduce the symptoms of polycystic ovarian syndrome. Importantly, it is considered to be a pharmacologically stable compound, upon which it is impossible to overdose.

Mono-methyl inositol and inositol isomers are produced by a number of Southern African plants used medicinally, including the Balloon Pea, Sutherlandia frutescens, an antioxidant which has traditionally been used to wash wounds and treat eye infections, as well as as a tonic to treat rheumatism and pulmonary ailments and boost immune function, the Honeybush, Cyclopia intermedia, from which an antioxidant rich tea is made, which is held to have anti-inflammatory and possibly cancer-fighting effects,  Lotonius laxa, and Bluebellvine, Clitoria ternatea, which is not used in medicine in Southern Africa today, but which is used in Asia to treat sexually transmitted diseases and anxiety.

Lupeol is a pentacyclic triterpenoid produced by a wide range of Plants, and is commonly a constituent of resins and plant waxes. Medicinally, it has anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial properties, and is used in some cancer treatments. In Southern Africa it is produced by a number of Plants, including the Namaqua Rock Fig, Ficus cordata, the Kokilaksha, Asteracantha longifolia, which is used by the Pedi people of northern South Africa as a treatment for rheumatism, urinary tract infections, and jaundice, as well as an aphrodisiac, as well as by a number of species of Euphorbia, 

Kaurenoic acid is an antibacterial compound produced by a variety of Plants, which is particularly effective against Gram-positive Bacteria such as Listeria, Staphylococcus and Streptococcus. It has also been shown to offer some protection against liver damage. Again, this is produced by a number of Plants found in Southern Africa, including the Bears Foot, Arctopus sp., the medicinal use of which has been recorded since the 1770s, as a treatment for gout, various infections and respiratory ailments, Alepidea sp., which has been used to treat colds, coughs, sore throats, influenza, and abdominal cramps, and Aster bakeranus, which has been used to treat venereal diseases, urinary tract infections, chronic coughs, and intestinal complaints.

Another chemical present is cyclolanostenol acetate, which can be produced by a variety of Dicotyledonous Plants and Animals. Notably, in Southern Africa, it is produced by Rafnia amplexicaulis, which has been used to make a tea used to treat pulmonary conditions, and as a substitute for liquorice. 

Small amounts of three decanoic acids were found within the resin. These are are produced by a range of Plants held to have medicinal compounds. Also present were hexadecane and octadecanoic acid, both of which have antifungal, antibacterial, and antioxidant properties.

While all of the identified chemicals are produced by a range of Plants across Southern Africa, Bradfield et al. feel confident in narrowing the field to plants found close to the site where the horn was discovered. When this is done, three species stand out as being highly likely to have contributed to the contents of the horn; the Prostrate Purslane, Corbichonia decumbens, which comprises 75% mono methyl inositol, 17% hexadecenoic acid and 16% octadecanoic acid, and which is liquefied for use as an emetic by members of the Zulu people today, the Liquorice Plant, Glycyrrhiza glabra, which contains 28% of mono-methyl inositol, 3.4% octadecanoic acid, and 4.9% hexadecenoic acid, which is widely used by traditional medicine practitioners across Africa, but which has generally been assumed to have been introduced to the continent by Europeans, and the Horse Gram, Macrotyloma uniflorum, which also contains mono-methyl inositol, hexadecanoic acid and octadecanoic acid, and which, while not used in African traditional medicine today, is used in India as an antioxidant and a treatment for insulin resistance. Another possibility is Mikania sp., which contains lupeol and kaurenoic acid, and which is used to treat Snake bites and venereal disease today.

Bradfield et al. conclude that the horn contains a mixture of extracts from at least two plants, almost certainly intended to have a medicinal use. The major components of this mixture are used to treat a wide range of ailments today, either by drinking or applying as an ointment; San people today often apply ointments to small cuts intentionally made for that purpose, which may also have been the case when the horn medicine was in use. There is no way to know what ailment(s) the mixture found in the horn was actually intended to treat, or whether that treatment would have been of any benefit to the patient. The medicine contains a number of active ingredients, but the medicine maker is likely to have had a world view very different to our own, including a belief in supernatural as well as (or instead of( physical causes for ailments, which would have affected the choice of ingredients to be used in a medicinal potion in ways difficult for us to understand.

Notably, two plants found to be growing abundantly in the area around the rock shelter today, Helichrysum sp. and Senecio sp., are both used in traditional medicine today to treat both physical and spiritual ailments, are unlikely to have been components of the medicine, based upon the gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis, although both the medicine and Helichrysum sp. have a Liquorice-smell, so it is possible that this was a component of the medicine but not detected instrumentally for some reason. The alternative explanation, that the Liquorice-smell derives from the Liquorice Plant, Glycyrrhiza glabra, runs counter to the current belief that the Plant was introduced to Africa by Europeans, although this Plant matches the chemical contents of the horn much more closely, and other Plants thought to have been introduced to Africa by Europeans have subsequently been shown to have been on the continent before Europeans arrived. 

The careful wrapping and burial of the horn and its contents implies that this was a valued object. It is likely that it was buried in the rock shelter with the intention that its owner would return and retrieve it at some point, but never did so. Similar finds of items probably buried for storage purposes have been found elsewhere in Southern Africa, for example a full hunting kit was found  Eland Cave in the Drakensberg Mountains. Other than this item, the rock shelter contains only a few ceramic shards and the rock paintings, with no indication that it was ever used as a dwelling. 

As far as Bradfield et al. are aware, the horn from the La vie D'Antan rock shelter is the oldest medicine container ever discovered in Southern Africa. The occupation of the region where the horn was found appears to have been ephemeral after about 2000 years ago, with nearby rock shelters at Boomplaas, Nelson Bay Cave and Matjes River, all of which were once occupied, having been abandoned during the first millennium AD. The information available does not allow the identification of the medicine-maker. The art in the rock shelter is clearly of San origin, but there is no evidence that the horn and the paintings were contemporary in origin. The choice of a Domestic Cattle horn would seem to imply the medicine was left by a Khoi herder, but there is no real reason to assume this. The San people sometimes kept Cattle, and even if this was not the case, the horn could have been acquired by a San medicine maker through scavenging, theft, or trade. Bradfield et al. note that nineteenth century records from the Western Cape state that the Khoi and San peoples there shared a belief in a mythical being called the Water Bull, which resembled a Domestic Bull, and which had horns with magical healing properties. 

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Machleida banachi, Machleida flagstaffensis, Machleida tarskii & Machleida zofiae: Four new species of Darkling Beetles from South Africa.

Darkling Beetles, Tenebrionidae, are a morphologically diverse group with over 20 000 described species, and many more still being discovered every year. The genus Machleida is one of seven southern African genera, with five described species, four of which are known from single localities in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, with the fifth being found in Madagascar, leading to its placement within the genus questioned by entomologists.

In a paper published in the journal ZooKeys on 10 January 2019, Marcin Kamiński of the Department of Biological Sciences at Northern Arizona University, the Department of Entomology at Purdue University, and the Museum and Institute of Zoology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Kojun Kanda of the also of the Department of Biological Sciences at Northern Arizona University, and Aaron Smith, again of the Department of Biological Sciences at Northern Arizona University, and the Department of Entomology at Purdue University, present a review of the genus Machleida, in which they describe four new species and formarly remove the Malagasy species, Machleida nossibiana, from the genus.

The first new species is named Machleida banachi, in honour of Stefan Banach (1892-1945), a prominent Polish mathematician and founder of modern functional analysis. The species is described from five specimens, collected in 1988 in what was then the Transkei Republic (now part of Eastern Cape Province) by Hungarian entomologist Sebastian Endrödy-Younga, four from Ntsubane Forest in and one from Ingogo Forest. This species ranges from 8.0 to 9.5 mm in length and from 4.0 to 7.0 mm in width, and is brownish in colour with abundant yellow hairs. It is typically covered in debris from the leaf litter in which it lives.

Machleida banachi, dorsal view. Kamiński et al. (2019).

The second new species described is named Machleida flagstaffensis, meaning 'from Flagstaff', in reference to the town in Eastern Cape, which is near the location where the species was discovered. This species is also based upon material gathered by Sebastian Endrödy-Younga in 1988, from the Ntsubane Forest and the Silaka Forest Reserve, also in the Eastern Cape. This species is much larger, reaching 13.0–15.0 mm in length and 7.0–7.5 mm in width. It is also brownish in colour with abundant yellow hairs, and typically covered in debris from the leaf litter in which it lives.

Machleida flagstaffensis, dorsal view. Kamiński et al. (2019).

The third species described is named Machleida tarskii, in honour of the Polish-American logician and mathematician Alfred Tarski (1901–1983). The species is described from two specimens collected by the Belgian entomologist Narcisse Leleup (1912-2001), in the Pirie Forest near King William's Town in Eastern Cape. This species reaches 9.0–9.2 mm in length, and 5.0–5.2 mm in width, and is dark brown or yellow in colour with abundant yellow hairs, and typically covered in debris from the leaf litter in which it lives.

Machleida tarskii, dorsal view. Kamiński et al. (2019).

The fourth new species described is named Machleida zofiae, in honour of Zofia Irena Kamińska, the daughter of Marcin Kamiński. This species is described on the basis of a single specimen collected in 1985 by Sebastian Endrödy-Younga in the Dwesa Forest Reserve in what was then the Transkei Republic and is now part of the Eastern Cape. This specimen is 11.5 mm in length and 5.5 mm in width, and brownish in colour with a coating of yellow hairs and a covering of debris from the forest floor.

Machleida zofiae, dorsal view. Kamiński et al. (2019).

The single Malagasy representative of the genus, Machleida nossibiana, has been considered to be a doubtful placement for some time. This is not uncommon with Malagasy species described in the nineteenth century, when it was not realised to what extent Madagascar represented a separate biogeographical realm to Southern Africa. Based upon re-examination of this species Kamiński et al.consider it should be placed in the genus Scotinesthes, as Scotinesthes nossibianus.

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