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About: History 1/4 About | History | SANP | Tourism Welcome to the history section.
In the seventeen hundreds Europeans came to the Lowveld lured by rumours of gold and the great quantity of valuable commodities such as ivory and skins thus forming a threat for nature in the lowveld. The first explorer to set foot in the region later to be the Kruger National Park was the Dutchman François de Cuiper who led a Dutch East India Company expedition to explore from Delagoa Bay (modern day Maputo) inland. However the expedition was attacked by tribal people near Gomondwane. So François had to flee the area. So once more the lowveld confirmed its reputation being a harsh land. Much later in the history of Southern Africa around 1838 Voortrekker expeditions led by Louis Trichardt and Hans van Rensburg traveled through the region on their way to Delagoa bay. But also they met hardship.
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During
the past number of centuries the human race has become the most numerous
destructive species on the planet. It is ironic that humans are now the only
hope for the plane to survive. One of the remarkable things to have happened the
last century is conservatism. The early conservationist did there very best to
ensure that coming generations will have the same view of the Mpumalanga and
Northern Province view of the lowveld as has been enjoyed over millions of
years. One half of a million ago the first San stone age hunters roamed the
plains in search of game. The modern day San or better known as bushmen have
left fascinating rock paintings all over the Republic of South Africa. In the
Kruger National Park there are over one hundred sites of these paintings. Over
fifteen hundred years ago the first iron melters were to be found in the modern
day provinces. There are three hundred iron age sites in the Kruger National
Park. They have been identified by the department of Archaeology of the
university of Pretoria. Actually in the last century there will still original
iron melters in the baPhalaborwa tribe. These melters made a living out of the
craftmanship because the tsetse flies infected the cattle with the deadly nagana
disease making it impossible to breed cattle. These iron age men forced the San
to migrate west to the Kalahari desert over a long period of years. 