Olivia Le Cordeur

Join Olivia Le Cordeur for an intimate encounter with one of the most extraordinary chapters in human history. As curator of the Wellington Museum since 2008, Olivia invites guests to handle ancient stone tools dating back nearly two million years, bringing humanity's earliest ingenuity vividly to life.
Few visitors expect a small country museum to house a collection that reaches so deeply into the human story. Among its treasures is an extraordinary assemblage of authentic Homo erectus hand axes discovered in the Wellington Valley - objects that first appeared around 1.8 million years ago and are widely regarded as among humanity's earliest and most enduring design achievements.

Elegant in their symmetry and astonishing in their sophistication, these hand axes reveal how form and function came together long before the written word. Rather than being carved, they were shaped through the careful removal of hundreds of stone flakes, a process of deliberate refinement that gradually revealed a perfectly balanced form. It is a philosophy of design through subtraction that continues to inspire artists, architects and designers today.

Far more than ancient tools, these remarkable artefacts represent the first expressions of intentional design - objects that reveal the ingenuity, imagination, and aesthetic sensibility of our earliest ancestors. They invite a rare moment of reflection on the origins of creativity itself.

Complete your visit by exploring the museum's interpretation of Wellington's Fynbos landscape. For millions of years, this remarkable ecosystem has shaped the rhythms of life in this corner of the Cape, providing the ecological backdrop against which early humans evolved. To stand here is to encounter not only the beginnings of human innovation, but also the ancient natural world that first inspired our species to observe, imagine, create and ultimately ask what it means to be fully alive.
 

Museum Hours: 08:00–16:00 - closed on weekends

60 Church Street, central Wellington

021 873 4710

Entrance Fee – R20 per person at the door