Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

“Strange” – Scientists Discover Ghostly 23,000-Year-Old Human Footprints in New Mexico
Scitech Daily ^ | June 23, 2025 | Kyle Mittan, University of Arizona

Posted on 06/24/2025 6:24:32 AM PDT by Red Badger

Human footprints at White Sands National Park in New Mexico, reported in 2021, show that human activity occurred in the Americas as long as 23,000 years ago – about 10,000 years earlier than previously thought. A new U of A study supports the 2021 findings. Credit: David Bustos/White Sands National Park

======================================================================

Evidence buried in gypsum dunes suggests humans arrived far earlier than expected. Radiocarbon dates from three materials agree.

Vance Holliday quickly accepted an invitation to do geological research at White Sands in New Mexico. The area, located just west of Alamogordo, is known for its surreal landscape—endless rolling dunes of fine beige gypsum left behind by ancient seas. It is considered one of the most unique geological formations in the world.

However, much of the region is protected as a national park, and a nearby section is used by the U.S. Army as a missile range, which often limits access for researchers. Despite this, Holliday, an archaeologist and geologist from the University of Arizona, took the opportunity to begin research in the park in 2012. While there, he asked—more out of curiosity than expectation—if he could visit a site located on the missile range.

“Well, next thing I know, there we were on the missile range,” he said.

Holliday and a graduate student spent several days studying the geologic layers exposed in trenches that had been dug by earlier researchers, hoping to build a clearer timeline of the area’s history. What they didn’t realize was that just about 100 yards away, footprints preserved in ancient clay and buried beneath gypsum would soon challenge long-standing beliefs about when humans first arrived in the Americas.

Footprint discovery sparks global interest

Researchers from Bournemouth University in the United Kingdom and the U.S. National Park Service excavated the footprints in 2019 and published their findings in 2021. Although Holliday was not involved in the excavation itself, he became a co-author after data he collected in 2012 helped determine the age of the prints.

The tracks indicated that humans were present in the area between 23,000 and 21,000 years ago, a timeframe that challenges long-held beliefs about when cultures first appeared in North America. This would make the footprints roughly 10,000 years older than the remains discovered near Clovis, New Mexico, a site that defined what was long considered the continent’s earliest known culture. Since the 2021 publication, critics have questioned the findings, primarily arguing that the ancient seeds and pollen used for dating were not reliable indicators.

New study confirms original dates

Now, Holliday leads a new study that supports the 2021 findings – this time relying on ancient mud to radiocarbon date the footprints, not seeds and pollen, and an independent lab to make the analysis. The paper was published in the journal Science Advances.

Specifically, the new paper finds that the mud is between 20,700 and 22,400 years old – which correlates with the original finding that the footprints are between 21,000 and 23,000 years old. The new study now marks the third type of material – mud in addition to seeds and pollen – used to date the footprints, and by three different labs. Two separate research groups now have a total of 55 consistent radiocarbon dates.

“It’s a remarkably consistent record,” said Holliday, a professor emeritus in the School of Anthropology and Department of Geosciences who has studied the “peopling of the Americas” for nearly 50 years, focusing largely on the Great Plains and the Southwest.

“You get to the point where it’s really hard to explain all this away,” he added. “As I say in the paper, it would be serendipity in the extreme to have all these dates giving you a consistent picture that’s in error.”

Millennia ago, White Sands was a series of lakes that eventually dried up. Wind erosion piled the gypsum into the dunes that define the area today. The footprints were excavated in the beds of a stream that flowed into one such ancient lake.

“The wind erosion destroyed part of the story, so that part is just gone,” Holliday said. “The rest is buried under the world’s biggest pile of gypsum sand.”

For the latest study, Holliday and Jason Windingstad, a doctoral candidate in environmental science, returned to White Sands in 2022 and 2023 and dug a new series of trenches for a closer look at the geology of the lake beds. Windingstad had worked at White Sands as a consulting geoarchaeologist for other research teams when he agreed to join Holliday’s study.

A challenge to everything they were taught

“It’s a strange feeling when you go out there and look at the footprints and see them in person,” Windingstad said. “You realize that it basically contradicts everything that you’ve been taught about the peopling of North America.”

Holliday acknowledges that the new study doesn’t address a question he’s heard from critics since 2021: Why are there no signs of artifacts or settlements left behind by those who made the footprints?

It’s a fair question, Holliday and Windingstad said, and Holliday still does not have a peer-reviewed answer. Some of the footprints uncovered for the 2021 study were part of trackways that would have taken just a few seconds to walk, Holliday estimates. It’s perfectly reasonable, he said, to assume that hunter-gatherers would be careful not to leave behind any resources in such a short time frame.

“These people live by their artifacts, and they were far away from where they can get replacement material. They’re not just randomly dropping artifacts,” he said. “It’s not logical to me that you’re going to see a debris field.”

Even though he was confident in the 2021 findings to begin with, Holliday said, he’s glad to have more data to support them.

“I really had no doubt from the outset because the dating we had was already consistent,” Holliday said. “We have direct data from the field – and a lot of it now.”

Reference:

“Paleolake geochronology supports Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) age for human tracks at White Sands, New Mexico”

by Vance T. Holliday, Jason D. Windingstad, Jordon Bright, Bruce G. Phillips, Joel B. Butler, Ryan Breslawski and James E. Bowman, 18 June 2025, Science Advances.

DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adv4951


TOPICS: Education; History; Military/Veterans; Outdoors
KEYWORDS: ancientnavigation; footprints; godsgravesglyphs; newmexico; paleolithic; whitesands
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061 next last
To: Red Badger
...Evidence buried in gypsum dunes suggests humans arrived far earlier than expected...

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Sheesh.

41 posted on 06/24/2025 7:43:02 AM PDT by mewzilla (Swing away, Mr. President, swing away!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: RoosterRedux
LOL. Bigfoot strikes again.

It wasn't me, honest!!!

42 posted on 06/24/2025 7:44:15 AM PDT by mewzilla (Swing away, Mr. President, swing away!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 20 | View Replies]

To: Red Badger

“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” - Various attributions...........


Unfortunately, it is very difficult to “eliminate all which is impossible”. Most problems have a near infinite number of possibilities, in part, because of our limited data and sensory apparatus.


43 posted on 06/24/2025 7:48:47 AM PDT by marktwain
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 40 | View Replies]

To: Red Badger

And they still weren’t “indigenous”.


44 posted on 06/24/2025 7:49:43 AM PDT by SaxxonWoods (The road is a dangerous place man, you can die out here...or worse. -Johnny Paycheck, 1980, Reno, NV)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Red Badger

Along and in the Paluxy River in Texas there are dino tracks and human tracks in the same layer. Big dino tracks...


45 posted on 06/24/2025 7:51:53 AM PDT by SaxxonWoods (The road is a dangerous place man, you can die out here...or worse. -Johnny Paycheck, 1980, Reno, NV)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: marktwain

There seems to be in scientific circles today a tendency to become sedentary in our theories to not allow any upsetting of the status quo. This is not science, it becomes dogma.

Galileo had a problem with it, too.........


46 posted on 06/24/2025 7:54:49 AM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegals are put up in 5 Star hotels....................)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 43 | View Replies]

To: BamaBelle

We’ve got petroglyphs here, awesome stuff. The strange thing is, no matter where you find them around western Colorado and Utah, they look like the same person created them. Busy artist.


47 posted on 06/24/2025 7:55:27 AM PDT by SaxxonWoods (The road is a dangerous place man, you can die out here...or worse. -Johnny Paycheck, 1980, Reno, NV)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]

To: BipolarBob

They know the age of the layer of the ground the tracks are in.


48 posted on 06/24/2025 7:57:37 AM PDT by SaxxonWoods (The road is a dangerous place man, you can die out here...or worse. -Johnny Paycheck, 1980, Reno, NV)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 26 | View Replies]

To: SaxxonWoods

I have long suspected that there were dinosaurs of some type that survived up until man had spread across the globe. That is one explanation for the common ubiquitous ‘dragon’ all over the world in totally disconnected societies............


49 posted on 06/24/2025 7:58:17 AM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegals are put up in 5 Star hotels....................)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 45 | View Replies]

To: Red Badger

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calico_Early_Man_Site
This ones even older...


50 posted on 06/24/2025 8:01:50 AM PDT by Slicksadick (We accept the love we think we deserve.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Red Badger

Human footprints in the southwest U.S. at a time when the ice age had most of the northern 48 covered in ice. It makes sense to me.


51 posted on 06/24/2025 8:07:46 AM PDT by Wuli (uire)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BipolarBob

Organic material ( seeds and pollen) compressed down by the foot….these are carbon dated


52 posted on 06/24/2025 8:11:56 AM PDT by Vaquero (Don't pick a fight with an old guy. If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you. )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 26 | View Replies]

To: Red Badger

I wonder what he looked like having two right feet.


53 posted on 06/24/2025 8:21:03 AM PDT by Ronald77
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Ronald77

I believe that is two individuals........


54 posted on 06/24/2025 8:27:59 AM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegals are put up in 5 Star hotels....................)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 53 | View Replies]

To: Red Badger

Copy that!


55 posted on 06/24/2025 8:52:55 AM PDT by Don@VB (THE NEW GREEN DEAL IS JUST THE OLD RED DEAL)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 32 | View Replies]

To: SaxxonWoods; Vaquero

Re-read my question.


56 posted on 06/24/2025 9:31:33 AM PDT by BipolarBob (I don't have any bad habits. I'm good at them all.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 48 | View Replies]

To: Vermont Lt

The issue with the western hemisphere is how did they get across from Asia?

The obvious way is during an ice age when the Bering straits were a forest. This is how horses got from here (they evolved in NAermica but then died out) to there; and how things like mammoths got from there over to here. There have been numerous ice ages, so numerous opportunities.

I am amazed that anyone is surprised by this. And, yes, there are findings in SAmerican mountains of varieties of humans not like what is climbing about now. Extinct varieties.


57 posted on 06/24/2025 9:38:53 AM PDT by bobbo666
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Red Badger; SunkenCiv; null and void; Phinneous
Two separate research groups now have a total of 55 consistent radiocarbon dates.

>>>

A challenge to everything they were taught

“It’s a strange feeling when you go out there and look at the footprints and see them in person,” Windingstad said. “You realize that it basically contradicts everything that you’ve been taught about the peopling of North America.”

"I don't know if you people are aesthetic.." ~ President Trump on the lawn of the White House, Jun 18, 2025

Todays AI answer to "what is sublime humor":

AI Overview

Sublime humor, in an aesthetic sense, refers to humor that evokes a sense of awe, wonder, and sometimes even terror, by engaging with the vastness, power, or incomprehensibility of something, often nature or the human condition. It's a type of humor that goes beyond simple amusement, prompting contemplation and a feeling of being overwhelmed by something greater than oneself.

🤔

Significant events

The missile range was originally established in 1941 as the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range.

On 16 July 1945, the first atomic bomb (code named Trinity) was test detonated at Trinity Site near the northern boundary of the range, seven days after the White Sands Proving Ground was officially established,[7] near the towns of Carrizozo and San Antonio.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Sands_Missile_Range

"But the sand, for some reason, chemically, just works." ~ PDJT

Birth of the new clear Atomic Age:

The Atomic Age, also known as the Atomic Era, is the period of history following the detonation of the first nuclear weapon, The Gadget at the Trinity test in New Mexico on 16 July 1945 during World War II.

Although nuclear chain reactions had been hypothesized in 1933 and the first artificial self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction (Chicago Pile-1) had taken place in December 1942,[1] the Trinity test and the ensuing bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended World War II represented the first large-scale use of nuclear technology and ushered in profound changes in sociopolitical thinking and the course of technological development.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_Age

You realize that it basically contradicts everything that you’ve been taught about the peopling of North America

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

In 1893, at the age of 33, Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College, had taken a train trip to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to teach at Colorado College.[5]

Several of the sights on her trip inspired her, and they found their way into her poem, including the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the "White City" with its promise of the future contained within its gleaming white buildings;[6] the wheat fields of North America's heartland Kansas, through which her train was riding on July 16; and the majestic view of the Great Plains from high atop Pikes Peak.[7][8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_the_Beautiful

The date that inspired amber waves of grain and ushered in profound changes in sociopolitical thinking was the 197th day of the year. Besides 197 being the atomic weight of gold (Au, atomic no. 79), 197 letters describe the very first day of Creation (Gen 1:1-5, 197 letters).

wheat, white

What next?!

"Liftoff! We have a liftoff!" ~ July 16, 1969, "Nine Days" Begin



Human footprints at White Sands:

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

The Footsteps of Mashiach

John 4:35 Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.

“We have direct data from the field – and a lot of it now.”

58 posted on 06/24/2025 10:58:57 AM PDT by Ezekiel (🆘️ "Come fly with US". 🔴 Ingenuity -- because the Son of David begins with MARS ♂️, aka every man)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Ezekiel

I asked Brave AI a question this morning and it came back with a really sarcastic answer. That makes me worry............


59 posted on 06/24/2025 11:07:28 AM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegals are put up in 5 Star hotels....................)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 58 | View Replies]

To: Red Badger
Just kidding!


60 posted on 06/24/2025 11:08:55 AM PDT by DAC21
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson