TAKE a walk in the veld, enjoy the twittering of birds and the rustling of grass in the breeze, brush against indigenous shrubs, listen to the natural quietness, walk on a path cut out of a rocky hilltop … just five kilometres from the city centre. Sound impossible? Well, it's not, it's Johannesburg's rather wonderful Melville Koppies.

Just a suburb or two from the city centre, when you walk through the grand gates in Judith Road, Emmarentia, you'll be stepping back half a million years into Johannesburg's history, when stone age man left his tools at the top of the ridge.

The area consists of three sections: the central section of 60 hectares is a nature reserve, open to the public three Sundays each month; an open section to the west, the Westdene Ridge, an area of 100 hectares; and another open section of 10 hectares, the Louw Geldenhuys viewsite, south-east of the main section.

The nature reserve is a treat: over 200 birds have been recorded there, a range of small mammals have made it their home - mongooses, genets, civets, hares, hedgehogs, shrews - as well as various lizards, geckos, chameleons and tortoises. And hiding in over 50 varieties of grasses, are snakes: among them the deadly rinkhals and puff adders.

Wendy Carstens, a volunteer guide at the Koppies, stops at a wild peach tree near the entrance gates. "The leaves become covered in black and white caterpillars, which the Diederic Cuckoo eats, although the caterpillars contain cyanide."

As a result the Diederic Cuckoo kicks out one of the three eggs that the Masked Weaver lays (she can count to three) and lays one of her own in the nest. The weaver will feed the Cuckoo's chick together with her own two chicks. If the Cuckoo fed her chick the caterpillars, she would poison it, the chick only building resistance to the cyanide as an adult bird.

The area is ancient - the oldest rock on earth, greenstone, at 3 000 million years, is on the hill but overlaid by granite. Otherwise, the stony ridge consists of quartzite and shale. It is estimated that the quartzite ridges are believed to be 2.9 billion years old.

The Koppies were proclaimed a nature reserve in 1959, and when in 1963 an Iron Age furnace was uncovered, the nature reserve became a national monument.

"This year the reserve has a lot of shrubbery and spring flowers because we had a lot of early summer rain. 95% of the shrubs can be used for medicinal purposes," adds Carstens.

There are eight plant communities on the Koppies - from several different grasslands to shrubland to woodland.

Trees flourish on the Koppie. Some of them only grow on quartzite ridges - the Transvaal Milkplum and Wild Apricot. There are other wild varieties: the Wild Peach, the Wild Olive, Common Wild Currant, Common Wild Pear, Wild Elder, Wild Gardenia, Wild Medlar.

"We do have a problem with exotic trees and shrubs, usually the seeds of which are dropped by birds flying over," adds Carstens. Weeds also spring up easily, their seeds being carried in in the same way. They are pulled out individually or sprayed if growing in a larger outcrop.

In 1836 the first white settlers crossed the Vaal River, and in 1858 Gerrit Bezuidenhout was granted title of the farm Braamfontein, which at 3 500 hectares included the Melville Koppies. The farm was sub-divided several times and the eastern part bought by Lourens Geldenhuys in 1886 (the year the main gold reef was discovered in Johannesburg) for 4 500 pounds.

The farm included an area that stretched as far as Parktown in the east, Rosebank further north, Parkhurst and Linden in the north, right up to the Northcliff ridge at Alberts Farm, over to Triomf in the west and the southern end of Melville.

Everyone was buzzing with talk of gold at the time, with small deposits being found around the Witswatersrand before 1886. Lourens took an interest in these explorations, and together with his three sons, Frans, Dirk and Louw, formed the General Prospecting and Mining Company of Burgers of the ZAR (Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek), but nothing came of it.

Lourens bought a "mynpacht" (mining right) for 4 500 pounds and started mining on the white quartz outcrops of Melville Koppies, which looked promising. Traces of his sons' prospecting - broken rock with blast marks and a platform, on which stood a blacksmith's forge for sharpening tools - are still visible on the rocks. They found gold but not enough to make it economically viable.

Frans and Louw divided the western part of Braamfontein, and Louw married Emmarentia Botha in 1887. Their farmhouse still stands, at 14 Greenhill Road, as does Frans' farmhouse, now the Marks Park clubhouse, on the southern slope of Melville Koppies, outside the reserve. Their brother Dirk went farming in Ermelo in the Northern Province.

Their father Lourens settled on another of his farms, Elandsfontein (now Bezuidenhout Valley), where he did find gold and floated the Geldenhuys Estates Gold Mining Company.

Frans and Louw sold sections of their farms from time to time to create what is now the northern suburbs of Johannesburg. They both farmed successfully, supplying the growing town with fresh produce.

Frans' farm contained the Melville Koppies, and it was only after public pressure that the City Council finally declared the ridge a nature reserve in 1959. In 1963 an Iron Age furnace was discovered by Professor Revel Mason, former head of archaeology at Wits University.

Mason discovered several layers of occupation on the ridge, confirming the age of the area.

"In 1963 I was asked by the Melville Koppies Committee to have a look at what was visible on the top ridge - a ring. It wasn't too clear, only a trained eye could see it. We soon discovered iron-smelting debris - fragments of charcoal, slag raw iron and broken blowpipes on the floor of the furnace," says Mason.

These fragments were carbon-dated to around 1600 AD. Three other furnaces have been found on the ridge. And further afield, 13 furnaces have been found at Honeydew, about 8 kilometres north. "These were exposed on a dirt road, but were subsequently covered again to protect them," says Mason.

Another three furnaces were found at Lonehill in the far northern suburbs, but were subsequently destroyed in the residential march northwards. Further east, near Bruma Lake, another furnace was found. A plaster cast of this furnace was made, and it now resides at Wits University's archaeology department. The remains of another furnace are visible at Hearn Drive in Northcliff.

On Melville ridge, Mason dug downward another 1.5 metres, to a Stone Age camp, and found hundreds of Stone Age artefacts. These went back 50 000 years.

A further two metres revealed more settlements, going back 250 000-500 000 years, the first settlements on the ridge.

These ape-like men would have roamed in family parties in thick bush along the Westdene and Braamfontein spruits, in the Auckland Park and Melville valleys. Their artefacts consist of sharp stone flakes struck off a stone core with a stone hammer.

In the early Stone Age, about 1.4 million years ago, tool making had advanced to taking a large stone and sharpening its edges on both sides, making large, heavy-pointed hand axes and chisel-edged cleavers for chopping, cutting and killing trapped animals. These were carried by muscular early men and their remains have been found at Sterkfontein, suggesting they would have wandered around the bush and rivers of the Melville Koppies.

Middle Stone Age man appeared next, about 250 000 years ago and lasted to about 30 000 years ago. Shaping of tools was fine-tuned, with parallel-sided blades, with some flakes flattened on one side for fastening onto handles or shafts. These people were hunter-gatherers, with widespread camps, often in caves.

The late Stone Age arrived about 20 000 years ago, by which time modern man had emerged. There is a marked jump in evolution: camps have revealed pottery, hearths, fire sticks and digging sticks. Tools consist now of bone, wood and stone, made up as an adze, knife blade, borer, arrow or spearhead. A campsite has been found at the Koppies, on the nature trail at the bottom of the last flight of steps up on the ridge.

It is believed that Bantu peoples settled at the Soutpansberg mountains in Limpopo, 400 kilometres north of Johannesburg, around 350. Fragments of pottery have been found in the area, and similar pottery has been found in Tzaneen and Lydenburg, both south east of the Soutpansberg. They seem to have disappeared during a dry spell in 600 but not before groups of people had moved further south, settling in KwaZulu Natal around 500, and the Eastern Cape in 700.

In another wave of migration Bantu peoples settled again in Limpopo, about 1 000 years ago.

The Venda are these first South Africans. They trace their ancestry back to the establishment of the first indigenous capital on two hills, Bambandyanalo and Mapungubwe, near a small town called Pontdrift, almost on the border of South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana, some 100 kilometres west of Messina in Limpopo.

Another group reached the Soutpansberg in the Northern Province about 1300 AD and spread further into the Magaliesberg about 1400 AD. These settlements grew southwards to the Witwatersrand.

These people were pastoralists and as pastures in the Magaliesberg were exploited, they moved into the grassland below the Melville Koppies. It is believed they noticed iron deposits in the rock outcrops on the Koppies, and built the iron furnace now excavated. The stone kraal walls just above the furnace were probably built at the same time.

The clay furnace has two holes through which clay pipes are inserted. At the end of these two cows' horns are attached, and to the horns two large goat skin bellows, one each side of the furnace. Relays of men sat for up to 16 hours pumping the bellows in order to get the fire in the furnace up to temperatures of 1200 degrees Celsius in order to make the iron malleable.

The iron was left in the fire until it was a spongy mass, which was then beaten, and again heated and then beaten into its final shape - a spearhead or axe head. It is estimated that two trees were burnt for the making of every spearhead, and so the forested areas south of the Koppies quickly disappeared.

The Western Ridge has a cave, visible from Beyers Naude Drive, the road that runs between this Ridge and the central section. Says Mason: "We have found six pieces of broken bow and arrow points, of the kind used in Botswana until recently, in the cave, and a grooved stone which would have been used for shaping the arrow." Mason estimates the findings to be around 1 000 years old. These would have been Bushmen remains.

Mason says that a number of villages have been excavated at Klipriviersberg, a 600-hectare nature reserve south of the city centre. "We have found dozens of stone walls, millet seeds and cattle's teeth," says Mason.

This means that the southern group were pastoralists and agriculturists, whereas the northern group exploited the iron deposits and kept cattle. "It is likely that the northern and southern groups traded with one another and lived harmoniously," he adds.

That is, until the early 1800s, when the warrior Mzilikazi, who was ousted from KwaZulu-Natal by Shaka and his impis, settled in the area. Mzilikazi consolidated his army from defeated tribes, and by the mid-1820s he controlled a large area. But his reign was short-lived. The Voortrekkers moved in the area, and in 1837 he was forced to move further north, into Zimbabwe.

"There was great excitement during excavation. The whole of Johannesburg used to have these settlements, but they have been preserved at Melville Koppies only. Johannesburg is part of a huge prehistoric development, and a small part of that history is captured at the Koppies," says Mason.

• Other hikes around Joburg

When to visit

Melville Koppies are managed by a volunteer local management committee, and rely on donations from the public on open days. Day-to-day maintenance is carried out by volunteers and one helper from City Parks, who also have several wardens patrolling the western and eastern sections. An entrance fee is levied for group visits on other days (contact Wendy Carstens 011 482 4797).

The Koppies are open three Sundays each month, for three hours either in the morning or the evening. No picnics are allowed at the Koppies - visitors are encouraged to walk at the Koppies and then take their picnic baskets to Emmarentia Dam. There are two portable toilets at the lecture hut. Safe parking is available at the Marks Park Clubhouse opposite the gates in Judith Road, Emmarentia.

The Western and Eastern Ridges are open for hiking with dogs from dawn to dusk. On Sundays you can witness outdoor religious groups holding their outdoor church services .

Safe parking is available in 3rd Avenue, Westdene.

For more information on Melville Koppies, visit the website.

Websites for information

www.veld.org.za

www.footprint.co.za

www.wildswalk.co.za

Melville Koppies is now wheelchair-friendly. A paved brick path has been constructed on the western side of the protected area, on the corner of Judith and Beyers Naude Roads. The path curves down to a bridge and meanders on the other side between trees where benches are to be constructed. On open days wheelchair users can park at an entrance to the Koppies on Judith Road, 100 metres above the intersection with Beyers Naude Road.