The site has been studied and excavated by archaeologists since the 1940s and research here generates important insights into human history in the subcontinent of Southern Africa.

The cave contains up to 6 m (20 ft) depth of archaeological deposits reflecting human and environmental history through the Earlier, Middle and Later Stone Ages to the present.

According to the paper published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, making of the simple Oldowan tools and finding of animal bones from the 2.5-metre (8 ft 2 in) thick sedimentary layer inside prove that this cave was occupied by Early Stone Age humans about 2 million years ago.

[26][27][28] Also preserved are pollen, another key source of information on changing environmental conditions outside the cave, currently studied by Louis Scott but initially examined by E.M. van Zinderen Bakker.

[29][30][31] Lloyd Rossouw is researching phytoliths from the cave, which show changing vegetation profiles,[32] while preserved charcoal is being studied by Marion Bamford to generate data on woody plants.

[34] Indications of the cave's contemporary social or ritual significance relate inter alia to the occasional collecting of water, by local African people, for healing purposes.

There are other nearby sites where beliefs concerning the ritual power of water (associations with a mythic watersnake are remarked upon[35]), for example by members of the Zion Christian Church, include the Kuruman Eye and Boesmanspit.

[36] The rock art on the walls of the cave near its entrance, being researched by David Morris[37][17] and engraved stones found in the deposit[4] may implicate changing ritual significance.

Chazan and Horwitz refer, as Beaumont had done, to the introduction of manuports (unmodified natural stones) "with special sensory properties" by terminal Acheulean hominins, more than 180,000 years ago, to the deep interior of the cave which is characterized by "singular acoustic and visual qualities."