The very first modern humans are believed to have inhabited South Africa more than 100,000 years ago. In 1999, Unesco designated the region the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage site. South Africa's first known inhabitants have been referred to as the Khoisan, the Khoekhoe and the San. Starting in about 1,000 BCE, these groups were then joined by people who migrated from Western and Central Africa during what is known as the Bantu expansion southwards through Africa.
European exploration of the African coast began in the 13th century when Portugal sought an alternative route to the silk road to China. In the 14th and 15th century, Portuguese explorers traveled down the west African Coast, detailing and mapping the coastline and in 1488 they rounded the Cape of Good Hope. The Dutch East India Company established a trading post in Cape Town under the command of Jan van Riebeeck in 1652, European workers who settled at the Cape became known as the Free Burghers and gradually established farms in the Dutch Cape Colony. Following the Invasion of the Cape Colony by the British in 1795 and 1806, mass migrations collectively known as the Great Trek occurred during which the Voortrekkers established several Boer settlements on the interior of South Africa. The discoveries of diamonds and gold in the nineteenth century had a profound effect on the fortunes of the region, propelling it onto the world stage and introducing a shift away from an exclusively agrarian-based economy towards industrialisation and the development of urban infrastructure. The discoveries also led to new conflicts culminating in open warfare between the Boer settlers and the British Empire, fought essentially for control over the nascent South African mining industry.
Following the defeat of the Boers in the Anglo–Boer or South African War (1899–1902), the Union of South Africa was created as a self-governing dominion of the British Empire on 31 May 1910 in terms of the South Africa Act 1909, which amalgamated the four previously separate British colonies: Cape Colony, Colony of Natal, Transvaal Colony, and Orange River Colony. The country became a fully sovereign nation state within the British Empire, in 1934 following enactment of the Status of the Union Act. The monarchy came to an end on 31 May 1961, replaced by a republic as the consequence of a 1960 referendum, which legitimised the country becoming the Republic of South Africa.
From 1948–1994, South African politics was dominated by Afrikaner nationalism. Racial segregation and white minority rule known officially as apartheid, an Afrikaans word meaning "separateness", was implemented in 1948. On 27 April 1994, after decades of passive resistance, armed struggle, and international opposition to apartheid, the first black party African National Congress (ANC) achieved victory in the country's first democratic election. Since then, the African National Congress has governed South Africa, in an alliance with the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions.
Early history (before 1652)
Prehistory
Scientists researching the periods before written historical records were made have established that the territory of what is now referred to generically as South Africa was one of the important centers of human evolution. It was inhabited by Australopithecines since at least 2.5 million years ago. Modern human settlement occurred around 125,000 years ago in the Middle Stone Age, as shown by archaeological discoveries at Klasies River Caves. The first human habitation is associated with a DNA group originating in a northwestern area of southern Africa and still prevalent in the indigenous Khoisan (Khoi and San). Southern Africa was later populated by Bantu-speaking people who migrated from the western region of central Africa during the early centuries AD.
Professor Raymond Dart discovered the skull of a 2.51 million year old Taung Child in 1924, the first example of Australopithecus africanus ever found. Following in Dart's footsteps Robert Broom discovered a new much more robust hominid in 1938 Paranthropus robustus at Kromdraai, and in 1947 uncovered several more examples of Australopithecus africanus at Sterkfontein. At the Blombos cave in 2002, stones were discovered engraved with grid or cross-hatch patterns, dated to some 70,000 years ago. This has been interpreted as the earliest example ever discovered of abstract art or symbolic art created by Homo sapiens.