Human footprints that break with the most accepted theory of how America was populated

The first Native American humans did not come by crossing from Siberia to Alaska during the Ice Age. Human footprints found in New Mexico could be proof of the first human presence on the American continent, 10,000 years earlier than previously believedthe University of Arizona reported on its website Thursday.

Footprints found in White Sands National Park provide evidence of human activity in the Americas approximately 23,000 years ago. The results were published in the journal Science.

“I think this is probably the greatest discovery about the colonization of the United States in a hundred years.”said Ciprian Ardelean, an archaeologist at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas in Mexico who was not involved in the work. “I don’t know which gods they prayed to, but it’s a dream to find this.”

“For decades, archaeologists have debated when humans first arrived in the Americas. Few see reliable evidence dating back more than 16,000 years. Some believe that the arrival took place later, not more than 13,000 years ago, by the makers of artifacts known as Clovis Points. “said Vance Holliday, an archaeologist at the University of Arizona and one of the authors of the article in Science.

Clovis points refer to technology and tools, including spearheads, scrapers and needles, which date back some 13,000 years. The technology was known as Clovis, named after the town of Clovis, New Mexico, where some of these early instruments were discovered.

The era of tools and culture Clovis perfectly aligned with the retreat of the glaciers. This alignment reinforced a scenario in which Siberian hunter-gatherers moved to Alaska during the Ice Age, where they lived for generations. until ice-free corridors open up, allowing them to extend south.

This was considered the The first civilization on the continent and the forerunner of the groups that came to be known as Native Americans

“The White Sands tracks provide a much older date. There are several layers of human footprints in the beds of the streams where the water poured into an ancient lake. It was 10,000 years before the Clovis ”, he added.

United States Geological Survey researchers Jeff Pigati and Kathleen Springer have reached establish the age of the traces using the radiocarbon dating system of the seed layers found above and below the traces.

Studies have confirmed the human presence and the oldest footprints date back 23,000 years. These dates correspond to the dawn of the last glacial cycle, during a period known as the Last Ice Maximum, making the White Sands evidence of the oldest human footprints ever found in the Americas.

We thought that Humans entered the Americas much later, after the melting of the North American ice caps, opening up migration routes.

“Our sowing dates are very tight and maintain stratigraphic order above and below multi-track horizons. It was a remarkable result ”, Springer said in the same article.

The footprints found tell an interesting story and open a small window to the past since, judging by their size, they were left mostly by adolescents and younger children, sometimes with adults. “

“A hypothesis for this is the division of labor, in which adults are involved in skilled tasks while “searching and carrying” it is delegated to adolescents.

Footprints at White Sands show a portrait of what was going on: “adolescents interacting with children and adults ”, said lead author of the study, Matthew Bennett, of the University of Bournemouth in the UK.

The tracks were first discovered by David Bustos, the White Sands Park Resource Manager, and over the years he has brought in international teams of archaeologists to help him make sense of the finds.

Together, they found thousands of human footprints all over the park. A path was made by someone walking in a straight line for a mile and a half. Another shows a mother putting down her baby. Other footprints were made by children.

“Children tend to be more energetic”, said Sally Reynolds, a paleontologist at the University of Bournemouth in England and co-author of the new study. “They’re a lot more playful, jumping up and down.”

Mathew Stewart, a zoological archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, who was not involved in the study, said the evidence the humans left the footprints was “unequivocal”.

“What is fascinating about the study of fingerprints is that they present snapshots in time”, Dr Stewart said.

Some researchers have argued that humans could have settled across the Americas even when glaciers were still standing. Instead of traveling by land, they could have traveled along the coast. Alternatively, Dr Ardelean and colleagues proposed that the People traveled to America over 32,000 years ago, before Ice Age glaciers reached their maximum extent and blocked this route.

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