Posted on 05/17/2020 1:50:24 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
People walked across a muddy layer of volcanic debris that dates to between around 19,100 and 5,760 years ago, the researchers report May 14 in Scientific Reports. Dating of a thin rock layer that partly overlaps footprint sediment narrows the age range for the footprints to between roughly 12,000 and 10,000 years ago, the team says.
Engare Sero lies in the vicinity of two much older hominid footprint sites -- nearly 3.7-million-year-old Laetoli (SN: 12/16/16) in Tanzania and 1.5-million-year-old Ileret (SN: 4/16/12) in Kenya.
At Engare Sero, Hatala's team analyzed foot impression sizes, distances between prints and which way prints pointed. One collection of tracks was made by a group of 17 people walking southwest across the landscape, the researchers found. Comparisons with modern human footprint measurements indicate that this group consisted of 14 women, two men and one young boy.
The women may have been foraging for food, while a few males visited or accompanied them, the researchers speculate. Some present-day hunter-gatherers, including Tanzania's Hadza people, form largely female food-gathering groups.
In another set of six tracks, the footprints point northeast. Those tracks probably weren't made by people traveling in a group. Instead, the impressions suggest that two women and a man had ambled along leisurely, a woman and a man had walked briskly, and another woman had run across the area, the researchers say.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
Waiting line at the restroom.
the two men were obviously guards, to make sure that the women did not become prey of the dreaded carnivorous felis catus.
Or, they took a lot of females along so they could push one down when attacked by the cat.
Thanks for the laugh. It was a hearty one.
There was a science fiction story about time travel and how some present day people discovered in a dig, a jeep with nearby dinosaur tracks but they were both from 65 million years ago.
12,00-10,000 years old, meaning they were modern humans, nothing to write home about. Now 3-2.5 million would be...
"I don't have to outrun the cat. I just have to outrun her!"
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