Ditsong Tswaing Meteorite Crater
DITSONG Tswaing Meteorite Crater
About 220 000 years ago a blazing stony meteorite of approximately 50m slammed into the earth’s crust. The impact formed a huge crater, 1,13 km in diameter and initially 200 m deep.
This crater, formerly known as the Pretoria Saltpan (or Zoutpan), is situated 40 km north of the Pretoria CBD and is one of the best-preserved terrestrial meteorite impact craters in the world. Tswaing also has a saline crater lake which is fed by underground springs.
The name Tswaing means Place of Salt in Setswana.
Regular visits to Tswaing by people began during Middle Stone Age, about 150 000 to 30 000 years ago. Small nomadic groups of people visited Tswaing to hunt game, gather edible and medicinal plants and to collect salt. Iron Age people lived in the proximity of the crater, 800 - 900 years ago, tending their cattle, growing crops and collecting salt from the crater floor. Evidence of early people and the salt mine which operated at Tswaing between 1912 and 1950 can still be found.
Today, Tswaing is an almost 2000-hectare conservation area with a focus on the conservation of natural and cultural heritage (mining, farming and oral histories) of the site. In local mythology it is believed that a large snake lives in the crater lake and will eat anyone who is near the lake at night. The snake stores the bones of its victims in a cave on the hillside.
