This site carries evidence of cultures from Johannesburg’s distant past: ancient hunter-gatherers, early farmers and the first iron age miners of the Witwatersrand. It offers an impressive record of occupation by different communities over thousands of years. Stone age people left behind stone weapons and tools. Later Bantu speaking people constructed stone-walled villages and built iron-smelting furnaces for making hoes and assegais. Melville Koppies is known for its indigenous flora, fauna and ancient geological formations located within an urban environment, and was proclaimed a Nature Reserve in 1959.