An indemnity form you must sign to climb the Magaliesberg's slopes from the Botha's farm, Shelter Rock, offers a curious warning: "Other people (you encounter on the mountain)... may be stupid, reckless or otherwise dangerous. They may be mentally ill, criminally insane, drunk, using illegal drugs and/or armed with deadly weapons and ready to use them."
It's true, you could encounter strange behaviour on the mountainside, but it's hardly likely to be odder than anything these rocks have witnessed before. The scars of humanity's foibles are scattered on its slopes and surrounds like clues to an archaeologist's treasure map.
The hike at Shelter Rock is a prime example. In just four kilometres of the eight-kilometre circuit, you climb 400 metres to one of the highest points on the Magaliesberg range. You pass the circular ruins of an Iron Age village, where ancestors of the Tswana smelted metal in the early '0s; the scattered remains of two stone forts built by the British to prevent the Boers from crossing the mountain during the Anglo Boer War (1899-1902); and a stone cairn where travellers have been adding an offering to a toppling pyramid of rocks to placate evil spirits for hundreds of years.
You also come across the farm's namesake, Shelter Rock, a large quartzite slab jutting up from the slope. It's here that the Tswana sought shelter from Chief Mzilikazi's raids in the mid-'0s and, years later, where Afrikaner women and children fled the violence of the Anglo Boer War.
Your reward at the top is a view encompassing Hartbeespoort Dam and Pretoria to the east, Rustenberg to the west and Joburg to the south.
Shelter Rock's historical richness is echoed throughout the range's 120km and in the Magaliesberg Meander, which stretches from Brits to Krugersdorp and Hekpoort to Pretoria.
At Pretty Place, the James's farm, between Rustenberg and the town of Magaliesburg, you'll find engravings left by the San on fine-grained diabase. They were discovered about 12 years ago when the then six-year-old Chad James noticed the outlines of an antelope sketched on a rock. They began paying more attention and spotted the petroglyphs all over the landscape (they've recorded 178 so far).
Most of the San art in the area is in the form of engravings, rather than paintings, and is on the central and western parts of the Magaliesberg's slopes. They depict identifiable animals and some have fine, linear patterns, believed to be ritualistic images of trance states.
The San are thought to have used drawings as an interface between the living and the spirit world. Other images appear to show details of where a young hunter's spear should pierce an animal to ensure a speedy kill.
Heidi James wrote an archaeology thesis on the engravings and now, together with her father, Derrick, conducts walking tours of the petroglyphs and Boer War sites on the farm. It's one of the few places you'll find the engravings in their natural surrounds (most have been taken to Wits University's Rock Art Research Institute in Joburg for safekeeping).
For more clues to the past, there's Barton's Folly, a blockhouse built by Major-General Geoffrey Barton during the Anglo Boer War.
Barton was instructed to guard the narrow entrance to Hekpoort. The fort was part of a line of blockhouses in the Magaliesberg to keep the Boers out of the Witwatersrand.
There are a few theories as to how the blockhouse got its name. Some say it was a folly because it didn't succeed in its aim (the Boers never came that way), but it's more likely the result of the building's structure, which differed from the standard two-storey blockhouse and was considered "somewhat foolish in design".
For more ancient history, it's best to start at the Maropeng Visitor Centre. From the front, the museum resembles an old burial mound, covered in grass; from the back it's more like the Starship Enterprise.
Once inside, you're in for a bleeping, beeping, wacky trip through time - with a boat ride, a psychedelic bridge crossing and quirky, interactive displays, including the Big Bang and a trip down the ages to modern times.
It's a showcase for the 47 000ha Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, where unprecedented fossil finds have been made.
Sterkfontein Cave nearby is world famous for where our ancient ancestor, Mrs Ples, was discovered.
The 2.5-million-year-old Austra-lopithecus africanus fossil was originally thought to be a middle-aged female, but later proved to be male. When it was discovered in 1947, it was hailed as proving that humanity's roots were African, and not European or Asian, as had been assumed.
A previous discovery of an Australopithecus africanus, the Taung Child, near Kimberley, had been met with international criticism. Many scientists believed you couldn't place such importance on a single, juvenile specimen, but the discovery of the adult Mrs Ples proved, beyond a doubt, that the Africanus was an intermediate genus between humans and apes.
Many visitors who come from Joburg and Pretoria to romp and stomp among the area's prolific bush bars, restaurants, hikes, cycle tracks and adventure activities don't realise that, in their attempt to escape the squalling cities, they're paying homage to their ancestry.
Humans have been escaping to these mountains from the days when our forebears were more monkey than man.
When you walk the Magaliesberg's many tracks, you're following a trail through time.
Recommended reading
The Magaliesberg by Vincent Carruthers (Protea) is the guide to the Magaliesberg and you'll hear locals quoting from it with religious fervour. Just about anything you want to know about the area can be found between its pages.
What to do in Magaliesberg
