Laid down by a traveler walking across a rain-swept dune, the oldest-known footprints of a modern human survived the cataclysms of more than 100,000 years - only to be ground down in the three years since their discovery by the sneakers and boots of curious tourists.
Visitors following in the walker's ancient footsteps slowly are wearing them away. They place their own feet in the delicate, fossilized prints to marvel; scratch their names on surrounding rocks to show they, too, once passed by; even picnic on top of the site.On Wednesday, South Africa decided to cut out the prints in their soft sandstone and remove them to safety at the South African Museum, 75 miles away in Cape Town, possibly as early as May.
"The footprints are just too much at risk at the moment," said Johan Verhoef, cultural resources manager at the South African National Parks Board.
Verhoef said erosion by wind and rain had also played a part in the decision. The prints are believed to be those of a young woman.
The work is to be done with the guidance of international conservation experts; afterward, a cast will be left in the place of the originals.
Quickly buried by windblown sand after the traveler laid them down, the prints gradually turned to stone. Geologist David Roberts uncovered them after spotting ancient tools and fossilized animal prints in the area.
Although much older footprints of ape-like human ancestors survive, the Langebaan tracks are the oldest prints made by anatomically modern humans, indistinguishable from people living today.
"They should be preserved. The importance of these prints lies in their age and rarity," Roberts said. "Finding them was a million-to-one chance."
Though the prints have been treated with preservative resin, the crumbling of the stone ledge on which they sit still threatens them.
Sloping down to the beach, the ledge juts out of a cliff in an area popular with windsurfers and bathers, who could easily damage the eroded prints further.
Graffiti covers the surrounding cliffs.