BLAST Vredefort Dome Tours

29/05/2026

SOMETHING TO FRIDAY 13TH AFTER ALL
Our fate may be written in the stars

Panic swept the world in 2004 when NASA announced that a highly dangerous asteroid would hit the Earth in 2029. Nicknamed Apophis (the "Uncreator"), it was identified heading for us with a high probability of catastrophe.

This was at a time soon after we learnt that the extinction of the dinosaurs was caused by an asteroid. The event occurred 66 million years ago on the Yucatan Peninsula and it wiped out 75% of life on Earth.

Apophis - named after the ancient adversary of the Sun God Ra in Egyptian mythology - is not going to hit us in 2029. Later calculations showed that if it passes through a very narrow slot near Earth known as the keyhole, when it returns seven years later it will smack into us on - wait for it - Friday 13 April 2036.

So there may be something to that bad-luck superstition after all.

Spoiler Alert: The probability of a worldwide asteroid catastrophe happening in 2036 is now next to nil. Apophis has been carefully tracked and is not on course for Armageddon any time soon. NASA's Dart probe is going to follow Apophis around the sun sending back data for physicists to chew on.

But the danger from space has not gone away and never will. Although Apophis is "only" 340-375 metres across, it could cause a colossal explosion. Enough to devastate a vast region and kill millions of people if it struck a densely populated area.

An impact by a 340-375 metre asteroid would release energy measured in hundreds to more than a thousand megatons of TNT, vastly exceeding the Hiroshima explosion. Johannesburg and much of Gauteng would cease to exist

Spoiler Alert 2: Would that be a bad thing?

No wonder, then, that the Vredefort asteroid, estimated at between 8 to 24km in diameter, which hit what is now South Africa some 2 billion years ago, devastated the entire planet.

Impacts are real and everlasting.

Other Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) are out there and some have our name on them. A few other notable Near-Earth Objects deserve mention:
— about 490 metres across. Current calculations give an extremely small chance of impact in the late 22nd century, particularly around 2182.
— about 1.1 kilometres across. Tiny impact probability in the year 2880, but large enough to cause global consequences.
— recently attracted attention because early calculations suggested a small future impact risk, but subsequent observations greatly reduced concern.

Impact studies are now part of mainstream geophysics. It's become ever clearer that our planet like all others is constantly bombarded and shaped by asteroids and comets. These catastrophes are part of universal normality.

One final historical irony: Apophis will make its spectacular close pass on Friday, 13 April - the very date that stirs deep fears in many. But instead of destruction, it is now expected to become one of the most closely observed asteroid fly-bys in recorded human history.

@ Learn more about the danger from space and Vredefort, the biggest known impact. Expert tours and presentations for schools, universities and all visitors. 084 245 2490
Https://vdome.co.za/

25/05/2026

BRING YOUR SCHOOL TO THE DOME!
Want an outing that is both educational and fun for the learners? Come to the Vredefort Dome. We've been running school and university group Ed-Adventures for more than a decade. Come for a day or stay over for a longer programme. The sessions include ecology, geography and mapping, history and tourism. We go for hikes to Dome views, and show our own informative videos to explain this, the world's biggest known meteorite crater - right here in the heart of South Africa.
Call or WhatsApp Prof Graeme Addison for info and rates.
084 245 2490 https://vdome.co.za

24/05/2026

THE AFRICAN SILK ROAD
Ivory and skins for porcelain

Ever since I visited Mozambique several times as a student on skindiving trips, the East Coast of Africa has fascinated me with its limitless horizons toward the East. The breathtaking sunrises over a golden ocean seemed to promise infinite discoveries.

Standing on those beaches at dawn, looking out across the Indian Ocean, it always struck me that this coastline must once have opened Africa to worlds very different from the later ambitions of Western colonialism with its mercantile rivalries, chartered companies, conquest and capitalist greed.

And indeed, what has steadily emerged from archaeology and historical research is that Africa and the East were deeply and seriously engaged in trade for centuries before European domination of the continent.

It is exciting to think of all the possibilities that this "African Silk Road" offered - but there is also a much darker side to this story as it unfolds.

Long after my student years I began developing a speculative but increasingly evidence-based idea that southern Africa once possessed something resembling its own Silk Road — not a paved imperial highway like Eurasia, but a chain of trade corridors linking the deep interior of southern Africa to the East African coast and onward to Arabia, Persia, India and even China through the monsoon trade winds of the Indian Ocean.

The route, as I currently imagine it, may have stretched from the Tswana interior around Kaditshwene in today’s North West Province, through the Limpopo corridor to Mapungubwe, onward to Great Zimbabwe. It included related stone-built kingdoms such as Thulamela and Khami, before descending through caravan routes to East African ports like Sofala, Kilwa, Zanzibar and eventually the wider Swahili trading world reaching as far as Dar es Salaam.

This is not fantasy. Archaeologists have found Chinese porcelain, Persian ceramics, Indian beads and imported luxury goods at inland African sites hundreds of kilometres from the sea. At Mapungubwe — South Africa’s first known sacred-commercial kingdom — elite graves contained gold artefacts and imported objects linked to the Indian Ocean trade system.

At Great Zimbabwe, Chinese celadon and Arabian trade goods have been unearthed. At Thulamela in the Kruger region, glass beads, porcelain and evidence of long-distance commerce point again toward Indian Ocean connections.

Think about what that means.

A person living near the Limpopo River in the thirteenth century could possess an object made in China, traded through Arab and Swahili merchants, carried across oceans by monsoon winds and then moved inland through African caravan systems and networks of exchange.
Southern Africa was not isolated. It was connected to one of the oldest commercial systems on Earth.

The exports from the interior probably included ivory, skins, gold, copper, iron, salt, rhino horn and possibly medicinal products and ostrich feathers. In return came beads, cloth, ceramics, porcelain, metal goods, ornaments and prestige objects that transformed status, kingship and culture. Beads in particular became markers of wealth and political authority.

The darker side to this story is that
the East Coast was not some peaceful multicultural paradise untouched by violence.

Competition for gold and ivory grew intense. Arab-Swahili traders, African rulers and later Portuguese adventurers fought to control the trade routes. Forts appeared on the coast. Alliances shifted constantly.

River mouths and caravan routes became strategic prizes.

Then came slaving on a devastating scale.

The Portuguese did not create slavery in Africa, but they inserted themselves violently into existing systems and helped militarise them. Coastal alliances, armed raiding and commercial rivalries increasingly destabilised the older inland trade networks. Entire societies were drawn into cycles of war, tribute and human capture.

What may once have been a relatively stable exchange system gradually hardened into a brutal struggle over commerce, labour and political control.

The old Indian Ocean trading world was transformed.

What fascinates me is that southern Africa may once have been oriented psychologically and economically toward the East rather than the West. The Atlantic world and European colonialism later overwhelmed that orientation and redirected African economies toward imperial extraction centred on Europe. Yet perhaps traces of the older world remain buried beneath our historical memory.

Even today there are curious echoes of this ancient eastern orientation emerging again through BRICS, Chinese investment, Indian Ocean shipping lanes and Africa’s growing commercial engagement with Asia. The Indian Ocean is once more becoming a central highway of world trade.

History has long rhythms.

The deeper I investigate this possible African “Silk Road,” the more it seems that southern Africa was never merely an isolated tribal hinterland waiting for Europeans to “discover” it. It was already participating — in its own complex and uneven way — in a vast Afro-Asian world of commerce, ambition, danger and cultural exchange.

The sunrise over the Indian Ocean was perhaps not the edge of the world at all. It was a doorway.

* This draft forms part of my history of the Vredefort Dome meteorite crater in South Africa. The Tswana city of Kaditshwene 1, now a ruin of tumbled stone walks, is situated in the Dome Bergland. Called Askoppies (ash heaps)by archaeologists, Kaditshwene means "the place of monkeys". Kaditshwene 2 is better known and near Groot Marico.

* Join me for a Dome tour or self drive briefing. Prof Graeme Addison, +27 84 245 2490. Https://vdome.co.za

20/04/2026

Most people know the tip of Africa as the end of the world. 20,000 years ago, it was the beginning of one.
When the Last Glacial Maximum gripped the Earth, sea levels dropped 130 meters. And south of the Cape coastline — stretching far into what is now the Indian and Atlantic Oceans — an entire world emerged from the sea.
Scientists call it the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain. A vast, fertile grassland the size of Ireland. Wide rivers crossed it. Wetlands filled its lowlands. Limestone fynbos and grassland covered its plains. Elephants, hippos, giant buffalo and blue antelope grazed across it.
And our ancestors lived on its edge.
The caves of Blombos and Pinnacle Point — famous today for the earliest evidence of modern human behaviour — once looked south over this enormous plain. The people who sheltered there didn't just see the ocean. They saw a homeland stretching to the horizon.
Then the ice melted. The sea returned. The plain drowned — slowly, then completely. 94% of it now lies underwater, perfectly preserved on the seafloor, invisible to everyone sailing over it.
Cape Agulhas — the true southernmost tip of Africa — was once the southern edge of a continent that no longer exists.
You are not looking at an ocean. You are looking at the cradle of modern humanity — hidden beneath the waves.

Want to go deeper? We just released a free chapter from The Lost Atlas ( Ancient Supercontinent )— Earth's oldest continents, mapped and explained. Link in bio.

17/04/2026

THE IMPROBABLE FOREST
African wild olives spread across Dome Bergland

There is a forest in the Vredefort Dome that most people drive past without ever quite realising what they’re looking at.

Not plantation, not invasive thicket, not riverine woodland — but a true indigenous stand of African wild olive, Olea europaea subsp. africana, spreading across the rocky ridges of the Dome Bergland in a way that is both improbable and quietly magnificent.

In a country where fire and frost favour grass, this is a forest that should not really exist — and yet it does.

This is another draft section of my book, Crater of Gold, about the world's biggest known meteorite impact site. Come for a briefing or tour and drive to see the crater... 084 245 2490

The Bankenveld landscape is a place of tension. Grassland presses in from the Highveld. Bushveld waits to the north. Fire sweeps through in winter. Frost settles in the valleys. Under those conditions, trees are usually scattered, cautious, held in check.

But climb onto the ridges of the Vredefort Dome and something changes.
The rocks come to the surface — ancient, fractured, and often quartzite — forming hard, dry ridges with thin, reluctant soils. These are not lush places. Water runs off quickly. The slopes are exposed, sun-beaten, and seemingly inhospitable.

And yet, this is exactly what the wild olive prefers.

While many trees seek moisture and shelter, the African wild olive finds its advantage on these dry quartzite ridges, where fire cannot easily take hold and grasses thin out. Here, on the rather waterless slopes, it escapes competition — and quietly builds dominance.
The result is extraordinary.

Not scattered trees, but a continuous, self-sustaining woodland, dense enough to form shade, structure, and its own internal ecology. It is, by far, the largest natural African wild olive forest in South Africa — not planted, not managed, simply grown over centuries in the quiet logic of geology and climate.

And yet — remarkably — it is not formally protected as a national heritage site under South African Heritage Resources Agency. It lies within a World Heritage landscape, yes, but the forest itself carries no specific monument status of its own.

Many conservationists regard that as an oversight.

Walk into it and you feel the shift immediately. The light softens. The air stills. Birds move differently. The ground carries leaf litter instead of open grass. You have stepped out of grassland and into something older, more enclosed — a forest that has taken hold not in spite of hardship, but because of it.

This is not a Mediterranean grove in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco and Algeria, where wild olives also spread across vast landscapes shaped by millennia of cultivation. Those are human-tended systems.

The Dome is different.

This is olive woodland that has emerged on its own, in a land that does not easily permit forests. It survives because the rocks allow it. Because water drains away. Because fire is broken. Because frost is softened.
Because the Earth, two billion years after a cataclysmic impact, still quietly dictates what can live where.

That is the real story here.

Not just a forest of trees — but a reminder that ecology follows geology, and that even in a grassland world, given the smallest advantage — even a dry, stony ridge — a forest will find a way. 🌿

16/04/2026

DIAMONDS AND THE DOME

Visitors to the Vredefort Dome impact crater often ask whether the impact created the diamonds of southern Africa. It’s a good question, but the answer is no. The two have nothing to do with each other in origin.

Diamonds formed deep within the Earth under immense pressure long before the impact. The Dome was created in a single catastrophic moment by an object arriving from space. One comes from the planet’s interior, the other from beyond it.

Yet there is a deeper connection between them. It lies not in how they were formed, but in why they are still here. Let me explain. (This draft article is another section of my coming book on the Dome, Crater of Gold. Join me in Parys for a Dome talk or tour: 084 245 2490).

Much of South Africa rests on the Kaapvaal Craton, a vast, ancient block of rock extending deep into the mantle. It acts as a stabilising anchor for the subcontinent. Immensely thick and remarkably rigid, it has endured for billions of years with little internal disruption.

Compared to the restless edges of continents, this region seems almost uneventful. There are no great earthquakes or chains of volcanoes. Nothing, it is often said, really happens here.
But that quietness is deceptive. It is precisely this stability that has allowed extraordinary things to both form and endure.

Diamonds are part of that story. They originate far below the crust, where carbon is locked into crystal form under extreme pressure. From time to time, they are brought to the surface in violent eruptions along narrow conduits known as kimberlite pipes.

These eruptions are sudden and dramatic. Yet they occur within a region that is otherwise stable. The craton’s great thickness preserves the conditions needed for diamonds to form and allows deep material to rise without destroying the surrounding crust.

The Vredefort Dome tells a very different story. Around two billion years ago, a massive asteroid struck this stable block of crust. The energy released was almost beyond comprehension.

What matters most is not just the impact, but its survival. In a more active part of the Earth, such a crater would have been folded, buried or erased. Here, it was slowly worn down, covered and revealed again, leaving behind the ghost of a once vast structure.

The same pattern is seen in other ancient cratons. The Canadian Shield and the Siberian Craton preserve some of the oldest rocks on Earth. Their interiors remain stable while their margins bear the scars of continental collision.
Southern Africa’s gold adds another layer to this continuity.

Ancient terrains like the Barberton Greenstone Belt and the Kraaipan Greenstone Belt released gold into early river systems. The metal settled into sediments that would later become the rich deposits of the Witwatersrand.

These deposits survived because the craton beneath them did not break apart. The Vredefort impact did not create the gold. But it helped reshape and deepen the gold-bearing layers, influencing how they would later be found.

Even immense geological events did not destroy this ancient foundation. The Bushveld Igneous Complex and the outpourings of the Drakensberg Basalt were vast in scale. Yet they were laid over or within the craton rather than breaking it apart.

So the connection between diamonds and the Dome becomes clear. The impact did not create the diamonds, and the diamonds did not come from the impact. But both have survived because they lie within a part of the Earth that has remained stable for extraordinary lengths of time.

Some say nothing interesting ever happens in the Southern African landmass because it is so stable and even boring. That's not at all the case. The craton is enduring. And in that endurance, it has preserved deep messages from the Earth’s interior, ancient rivers rich in gold, and the scar of one of the greatest impacts our planet has ever known.

Dome talk or tour: +27 84 245 2490

16/04/2026

BEAUTIFUL TIME OF YEAR
The Vaal River valley dressed in green

April and May are the months that show off our place at Otters' Haunt Eco Retreat at her glorious best. The sun shines, summer rains have left the river full and the garden flourishing. It's warm and peaceful.

During the next few weeks we are running lots of activities. Our adventure training is busy including a wilderness first aid and Casevac course, and a river rafting course. We're also doing public rafting trips, hikes and Vredefort Dome talks and tours.

It's quite a package and tiring but we love it. Karen Addison manages the accommodation and the hiking while I handle most other activities. Many visitors also come to canoe with family on the placid waters among the islands around our place.

It's really a paradise all on its own, tucked away among big trees and spreading lawns. The big drawcard is the mighty impact crater that surrounds us and is known to the Tswana people as NtsoanaTsatsi - the place of sun.

Come and see for yourself during this holiday period. Call Karen +27 82 475 8767 or Graeme at +27 84 245 2490. https://otters.co.za

Welcome to one of the most beautiful getaway spots close to Johannesburg. See our comfy accommodation. Discover the activities we offer, from hiking to rafting and more. The setting is gorgeous among the islands in this unique part of the Vaal catchment, shaped by an earth-shattering blast. WE’RE ...

15/04/2026

WHEN EARTH RANG LIKE A BELL
Astronomical shock blasted out the biggest crater

The reality of a massive meteorite impact on Earth or any planet is nothing like what most artist impressions show.

The bolide (asteroid or comet) strikes with such colossal force that the whole planet feels its effects. A truly big rock from space - say 5km in diameter or more - doesn't simply dig a hole in the ground.

During the Vredefort impact, Earth briefly forgot it was solid. In that instant, rock behaved like water, liquefied by shock. The impactor may have been anything from 8 to 24 km in diameter. The physics of the forces matches speed and mass, but we don't know either figure. All we know is the result.

Visit the crater in South Africa to see it for yourself: Talks, tours, booklet. 084 245 2490

The impact excavated a vast cavity, far deeper than anything we see today - perhaps 15km deep. The Earth, compressed by the blow, rebounded. Deep crust surged upward in a violent release of pressure, rising from depths in a chaotic burst of rocks.

This was the birth of the central uplift — the structure we now recognise as the Vredefort Dome, some 80-90 km across. But the rebound overshot. Gravity seized it. The rising mass spread outward and collapsed, breaking into great concentric fractures.

All around the central dome, rings formed. First, around the Dome itself, a ring of shattered and deformed rock shot up and quickly gave way to collapse. The final structure with its three rings was some 300km across - twice the size of the crater that killed off the dinosaurs.

Beyond the first ring, the disturbance travelled outward like ripples in a pond. The surrounding crust flexed and failed under the strain. Vast blocks subsided along circular faults, forming an outer ring of structural weakness on a continental scale.

This outer ring would later reveal itself in an unexpected way. It coincides, in broad arc, with the Witwatersrand Basin — the richest goldfield ever discovered on Earth.

The gold was not delivered by the meteorite. It was already there, laid down in ancient rivers long before the impact. But the collision reshaped the basin, tilted it, fractured it, and buried parts of it deep within the Earth. In doing so, it helped create the geometry that miners would follow billions of years later in their search for gold.

The original crater — hundreds of kilometres across — has long since vanished. Erosion, glaciation, burial and uplift have erased its rim and floor. What remains is something more subtle and, in its way, more extraordinary: the deep structure of the impact itself.

It is a ghost of its former self, but still very visible and impressive. What's left is the deep structure, the skeletal remains after two billion years of erosion.

The Earth does not remember the crater as a shape on the surface. It remembers it in its bones. The Dome became a saucer-shaped depression from horizon to horizon with the town of Vredefort close to the centre.

If we read the bones carefully, we can still hear the echo of the impact — not as a single hole in the ground, but as a rapidly unfolding set of rings around an upheaval. Our planet rang like a bell from extreme shock.

Much, much later, ice ages scoured the surface and planed the mighty mountain rings down to what they are today... Rounded, whalebacked ridges.

Visit the crater in South Africa to see it for yourself: Talks, tours, booklet. 084 245 2490.
https://asafrica.org/.

12/04/2026

NOT A HOLE IN THE GROUND Vredefort crater is horizon to horizon

Many visitors come looking for what isn't here. The world's biggest meteorite crater is too big to see - unless you're aboard a spacecraft.

But you can grasp its size from the video I shot from a prominent viewpoint. I swivelled a full 180 degrees from East to West, taking in the mountains of the first ring on the northern side of the crater.

This is nothing like the small, though impressive, Tswaing Crater near Hammanskraal, outside Pretoria. The photo of Tswaing during the summer rainy season shows its salt pan full of water. In fact, the crater was called Soutpan before it was correctly identified as an impact crater formed about 220,000. It is about 1.13 km across and roughly 100 metres deep, though some sources describe the original crater as deeper before later infilling.

Tswaing is one of the world's two "most perfect" craters (the other being Meteor Crater in Arizona). They are the exact idea of a perfectly round hole in the ground caused by a planetary event.

But Vredefort outranks all other impact craters for its sheer size. It's about 300 km across. There is no hole but rather a rolling grasslsnd plain masking a central core of uplifted granites from deep within the Earth. The crater has three major rings, the outer one being the Witwatersrand ridge where Johannesburg perches.

The comparison is all about scale. The Tswaing impact may have released the force of about 15 Hirshomia bombs. The almost incalculable Vredefort blast could have been the equivalent of 167billion Hiroshimas.

Neither crater was small stuff but we've got recognise just how astronomical Vredefort really was.

Come and see for yourself. Join me, Prof Graeme Addison, for a briefing or tour. +27 84 245 2490

12/04/2026

DO THE DOME BY WATER!
Trips all year

Drift downriver through the mountains of the first ring of earth's mightiest impact crater.

It's a leisurely advebture in the heart of South Africa. Experience the thrill of seeing a landscape created in the biggest explosion of which we have any record on our planet. See mountains once as high as the Himalayas now reduced by ice ages to ghosts of their former selves - but still impressive.

Join our expert guide to float through this amazing region on an easy day trip, with a delicious picnic lunch on the way!

084 245 2490