A trip to the Greater Cradle Nature Reserve in the Cradle of Humankind reveals the precariousness of our ancestral past and reminds us that herein lies our future.

Thirty minutes from Pretoria and Johannesburg is a living, breathing natural history museum of our origin story as a planet and as a species.

We meet our guide, Paul Zille, on the veranda of the eco-friendly Cradle Boutique Hotel for coffee, enthralled by the spectacular vista of sweeping savannah and dolomite grasslands.

Paul drives my two teenage sons, my partner and me on a refreshing rough-and-tumble meandering trip on the back of an open-top game-drive vehicle through parts of the 9,000ha privately owned Greater Cradle Nature Reserve.

Located in the heart of the Unesco Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, the reserve offers paleontological tours to two major live fossil exploration sites, as well as game drives and bush walks.

En route to our first stop, we encounter a nursery herd of inquisitive impala, warthogs, vervet monkeys and blesbok.

I am amazed at these calm, serendipitous sightings in these wild bushveld and savannah biomes so close to the high-rise, heaving human mess of Joburg on the distant horizon.

Paul stops at a viewpoint that allows us to take in the rocky landscape where the gold-laden reefs birthed the mining metropolis of Joburg in the late 1800s, attracting fortune-seekers and chancers...