The "devil's footsteps" were left in volcanic ash 345,000 years ago (Image: Elsevier / Scaillet)
Posted on 11/06/2008 5:42:40 PM PST by SunkenCiv
It's official: the oldest human footprints ever found are 345,000 years old, give or take 6000. Known as the "devils' trails", they have been preserved in volcanic ash atop the Roccamonfina volcano in Italy.
The prints were first described to the world by Paolo Mietto and colleagues of the University of Padova in Italy in 2003 after amateur archaeologists pointed them out.
At the time, the team estimated that the prints were anywhere between 385,000 and 325,000 years old, based on when the volcano was thought to have last erupted.
Now, Stéphane Scaillet and colleagues at the Laboratory of Climatic and Environmental Sciences, France, have used argon dating techniques to verify the prints' age... The new findings also confirm that the owners of the footprints were Homo heidelbergensis.
Mietto is setting off next week to excavate a second site, some 3 kilometres away. Early visits have convinced him that there are more human footprints, and he says it is highly likely that they are the same age.
The excavations should help reveal a trail that was used by early humans.
Mietto says that based on their stride, the people responsible were walking, not running. What's more, the prints are in both directions: leading to the volcano and away from it. Their owners were therefore not running away from a volcanic eruption and the prints must have been left some time after the event.
Dating experiments have not always confirmed suspicions. In 2003, a team discovered 40,000 year old footprints preserved in volcanic ash in southern Mexico. But when a separate group dated the Mexican prints using the argon technique used by Scaillet, they found that they were 1.3 million years old.
(Excerpt) Read more at environment.newscientist.com ...
The "devil's footsteps" were left in volcanic ash 345,000 years ago (Image: Elsevier / Scaillet)
Oldest human footprints found on volcano
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Posted on 03/12/2003 12:47:19 PM PST by CobaltBlue
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/863159/posts
Oldest human footprints discovered in Italy
News in Science | 3-13-2003 | Reuters
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/864052/posts
Alleged 40,000-Year-Old Human Footprints In Mexico Much, Much Older Than Thought
Eureka Alert/UC-Berkeley | 11-30-2005 | Robert Sanders
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1531402/posts
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7198/854/400/zzzzzzzzk.jpg
Footprints In The Ash (Human-Mexico-40,000-YA)
Science News | 5-29-2008 | Sid Perkins
Posted on 05/31/2008 12:25:17 PM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2024113/posts
Egypt discovers what may be oldest human footprint
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1884029/posts
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Looks like oversized Florsheim shoe prints to me.
Devil’s footprints????
Obama was there too???
Yup
Footprints? Not unless it was Bigfoot! Come on fellas.....
Three primitive humans who scrambled down the volcano's slopes left their footprints fossilised in volcanic ash. One person left a track of 27 footprints in a zig-zag pattern, which probably made descent of the steep slope easier. Another track of 19 prints shows a gentle curve, but there are occasional palm-prints where the walker put a hand on the ground probably to avoid slipping. A third track of 10 evenly spaced prints forms a straight line. There are also two animal tracks, possibly made by big dogs or wolves.
The human footprints are about 20 cm long and 10 cm wide. Using the average foot length to height ratio of 15 per cent, this suggests the people who made the tracks were only about 135 cm tall (4' 5").
Okay, that explains the sulfur, but where did they get the molasses for that godawful spring toxnic?
Wide, bare feet; 4’ 5” = GIANT HOBBITS!
four foot five, wide feet...long arms...gee, I wonder what that might be...maybe:
Bonobo
Compared to the size of the hiker’s feet in the photo, the footprints look much larger than “size 8”. They look like size 24EEEEE.
I may start using this one all the time:
Anthropology In The News
http://anthropology.tamu.edu/html/in-the-news.html
Maybe they forgot their wallet.
;’)
Note: this topic is from 11/06/2008. Adding to the list, not pinging.
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