Cape Town

Sister cities

• Haifa
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• Aachen
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History

The earliest known remnants of human occupation in the region were found at Peers Cave in Fish Hoek in the late 1920s. Subject to much debate, earlier estimations as to an upper Pleistocene origin have since been revised. At their most generous and conservative estimates, D.D. Stynder et al. radiocarbon date SAM-AP 4692 to the mid-Holocene at 5448 and 5136 BCE (or 7457 and 7145 cal BP) respectively. Bartolomeu Dias, the first European to reach the area, arrived in 1488 and named it "Cape of Storms" (). It was later renamed by John II of Portugal as "Cape of Good Hope" () because of the great optimism engendered by the opening of a sea route to the Indian subcontinent and East Indies. In 1497, Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama recorded a sighting of the Cape of Good Hope. In 1510, at the Battle of Salt River, the Portuguese admiral Francisco de Almeida and sixty-four of his men were killed and his party was defeated by the "Goringhaiqua" (in Dutch approximate spelling) using cattle that were specially trained to respond to whistles and shouts. The Gorinaiqua were one of the Khoikhoi clans who inhabited the area. In the late 16th century French, Danish, Dutch, and English, but mainly Portuguese, ships regularly continued to stop over in Table Bay en route to the Indies. They traded tobacco, copper, and iron with the Khoikhoi clans of the region in exchange for fresh meat and other essential traveling provisions. In 1652, Jan van Riebeeck and other employees of the United East India Company (, VOC) were sent to the Cape Colony to establish a way-station for ships travelling to the Dutch East Indies, and the Fort de Goede Hoop (later replaced by the Castle of Good Hope). The settlement grew slowly during this period, as it was hard to find adequate labour. This labour…

Most-observed species

• Cape White-eye

  Zosterops virens Sundevall, 1850 · Aves
  12,699
• Egyptian Goose

  Alopochen aegyptiaca (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  12,318
• Hadada Ibis

  Bostrychia hagedash (Latham, 1790) · Aves
  12,269
• Red-winged Starling

  Onychognathus morio (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  11,730
• Red-eyed Dove

  Streptopelia semitorquata (Rüppell, 1837) · Aves
  11,005
• Southern Double-collared Sunbird

  Cinnyris chalybeus (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  10,697
• Hartlaub's Gull

  Chroicocephalus hartlaubii (Bruch, 1855) · Aves
  10,107
• European Starling

  Sturnus vulgaris Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  9,957

Most recent

• M 3.5 — 2020-11-16
  47 km S of Saldanha, South Africa
• M 2.7 — 2020-09-27
  12 km W of Paarl, South Africa
• M 2.6 — 2020-09-26
  19 km ESE of Atlantis, South Africa