Posted on 05/31/2008 12:25:17 PM PDT by blam
Footprints in the ash
By Sid Perkins
May 29th, 2008
Humans may have been walking around what is now central Mexico 40,000 years ago
HUMAN PRINTS
Footprints (one left) left in volcanic ash that fell in central Mexico’s Valsequillo Basin about 40,000 years could be evidence that humans have inhabited the Americas far longer than previously confirmed. Laser scans of the prints (right) confirm their human origins, the researchers report today at the American Geophysical Union meeting.
Footprints left in volcanic ash that fell in central Mexico’s Valsequillo Basin about 40,000 years ago are evidence that humans have inhabited the Americas far longer than previously confirmed, a new study suggests.
Analyses of three-dimensional laser scans of the imprints (example at right) confirm their human origin, says Silvia Gonzalez, a geoarchaeologist at Liverpool John Moores University in England.
Previous finds of human remains elsewhere in the region couldn’t be precisely dated because they were found in layers of mixed gravels that probably incorporated materials of many different ages.
However, a new analysis of the coarse-grained, print-ridden volcanic ash — which would have hardened quickly after it fell, says Gonzalez — strongly suggest the material fell around 40,000 years ago, she and her colleagues reported today in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
Excavations at several sites have suggested that humans have inhabited the Western Hemisphere for at least 20,000 years, but results suggesting dates of occupation before 14,000 years ago typically haven’t been confirmed and remain controversial.
Nevertheless, says Gonzalez, recent excavations at a site in Baja California have unearthed a rock shelter containing heaps of shells that have been carbon-dated as 44,000 years old, a finding that bolsters the notion that people lived throughout the region about 40 millennia ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
You're missing the point. Simply because humans who lived 10,000, or 40,000, or whatever years ago were primitive in comparison to us does not mean they were stupid. A raft is a simple thing to imagine, build and, over time, improve enough to make a short voyage across a narrow strait such as the Bering.
Boats powered by oars are the oldest type of boat. The oldest boat found in the archaeological record dates to 7000 years ago. Here's a link to an FR thread about the discovery. The existence of one that old and reasonably sophisticated obviously means that boat making began some unknown period of time prior to 7000 years ago. Raft making preceded boat making.
In their practical knowledge of and ability to survive in nature, ancient peoples were more rugged and advanced than modern people, accustomed as we are to machines, comfortable homes, cars, roads, and supermarkets. They could kill, butcher and preserve huge animals like mammoths with nothing more than their ingenuity and ability to work in groups.
Just as at some point in the distant past humans learned to control fire and cook their food, they surely figured out how to cross bogs, swamps, wide rivers and large lakes, then progressed to traveling along seashores in watercraft to exploit the sea's rich food sources. From crossing rivers and lakes to crossing the Bering straight on a raft is no big leap of the imagination.
Bad luck.
Fish hooks.
Happy ending.
The problem in archaeology is when to stop laughing.
—Dr Glyn Daniel
Antiquity, Dec 1961
My comment was about a South Pacific transit, not a Bering Sea transit, so you’re arguing against a point I wasn’t making.
Still, as to what must have been a Bering Sea transit, your points are well taken. I have no other explanation for a 40,000 year old human footprint in Mexico. That person, or an ancestor, had to have made the passage by watercraft, presumably at the Bering Strait, instead of by the land bridge which appeared much later.
Thanks for the ping. I am fascinated by pre-Clovis Americans
(or the possibility thereof).
“How dare you deny the Old Testament? “
Easy - we have the New Testament.
“And when were the marvels of Roman and Greek architecture”
Actually, the Greeks and others were fifth columnists for Christ - Platos Cave Parable and Dialectic, the concept of Democracy are all very Christian concepts.
And yes, the great architecture like the Coliseum started 50 to 100 years AD.
Dont get caught up on exact dates - look at the big picture.
It could also be that many of the areas of denser population in that time are now under water.
I still have problems when trying to understand the Bering Sea Bridge thing. I admit to no education in the subject area so it’s all pure guess on my part, but...
The Bering Sea loc vic where the bridge is supposed to have been is clogged with ice during winter now, and it’s not an ice age.
If the ice sheets were thick enough to cover the top half of the North American continent, then the ice cap at sea must have been equally large and extended. The ice cap on land at the other side of the bridge would be down past the bridge entrance as well.
This would seem to me to mean that any migrating critters and/or peoples would have had to climb up on the huge, barren, lifeless and wildly dangerous ice cap, travel all the way along that ice cap to where it crossed the sea, all the way across the sea, and all the way down the other side of the ice cap.
All that, instead of moving south away from the ice where there was such luxuries as food, shelter, unfrozen water, and at least some potential for survival.
Now, if the sea was 200m or so shallower due to all that ice, how much closer would the shores, and how much more prominent would the various islands along the way have appeared to be?
The lower drawing shows the extent of the ice. It was not as extensive as you might suspect.
Hope this helps.
No, it's not. And it never has been, as far as we can tell.
Glaciers only form on land and mostly are funneled through existing land mass further deepening and widening the path of least resistance, which we'd normally consider valleys although that's not quite accurate.
The land bridge when exposed would have been essentially ice-free. The polar sea ice cap won't form on land, and icebergs don't wash ashore. Glaciers take thousands of years to form given proper precipitation.
None of that would apply to the land bridge.
“Hope this helps.”
Probably just my lack of education, but, no. The pics dont help much.
Especially the bottom pic with the ice sheets. That seems to be as purposely constructed to support a theory as what we’re currently dealing with in computer modeling support of climate chaos.
That’s an awful convenient channel through that ice.
I, also, dont understand how the ice cap could extend so far south in NA but remain conveniently retarded enough in the “Beringia” area to permit for the chosen theory to be viable.
Even in this non ice age period, ice in the areas of north eastern depictions on that map is still a problem to navigation and habitation.
The ice was where the ice was and we can tell where it was because it leaves scrapes and other markers.
Ice will accumulate where there is precipitation, and it won’t where there isn’t, regardless of the temperature.
“The ice was where the ice was and we can tell where it was because it leaves scrapes and other markers.”
You sure it’s not more of a case of one area being better surveyed than the other?
This website has some good links that may serve as a start.
Without a time machine equipped with a video camera, the indications of proof are not perfect. But this is not a problem that only scientists have to deal with. Historians and even biblical scholars have no video, either. Who's to say that Cleopatra or even Jesus existed?
When you have all the evidence you can find and it's uncontroverted, you make a conclusion.
That's only reasonable.
Thanks guys.
I am not trying to pick a fight or any such. This is a subject that has often struck me sideways and I appreciate your input and info offerings.
Highly recommend you read, "Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages" by Joseph Gies and Frances Gies.
You will find it quite interesting.
Thanks.
Footsteps in time that add 30,000 years to history of America
Times Online UK | 7/4/05 | Lewis Smith
Posted on 07/04/2005 9:59:36 PM PDT by freedom44
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1436650/posts
Mexico offers up ancient footprints (40,000 year old footprints)
Guardian (U.K.) | Tuesday July 5, 2005 | Maev Kennedy
Posted on 07/04/2005 11:15:36 PM PDT by nickcarraway
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1436677/posts
40,000-year-old footprint of first Americans
The Telegraph (U.K.) | 5-07-2005 | Roger Highfield
Posted on 07/05/2005 3:38:09 AM PDT by Renfield
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1436721/posts
Report Examines Ancient Mexican Footprints
Yahoo (AP) | Wed Nov 30, 8:34 PM ET | JENN WIANT
Posted on 12/01/2005 8:32:22 AM EST by The_Victor
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1531866/posts
Human Footprints older than thought
EurekAlert | November 30, 2005 | Robert Sanders
Posted on 12/01/2005 2:01:48 PM EST by Tzimisce
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1532106/posts
‘Footprints’ Debate To Run And Run (40K YO Human Footprints, Mexico)
BBC | 1-16-2006 | Martin Redfern
Posted on 01/17/2006 4:01:30 PM PST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1559913/posts
Cloud Of Scholarly Dust Rises Over Ancient (Human) Footprints Claim
(40K YO - Mexico)
Columbus Dispatch | 4-25-2006 | Bradley T Lepper
Posted on 04/25/2006 11:15:18 AM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1621279/posts
-sidebar-
Oldest human footprints found on volcano
New Scientist | March 12 2003 | Hazel Muir
Posted on 03/12/2003 12:47:19 PM PST by CobaltBlue
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/863159/posts
Oldest human footprints discovered in Italy
News in Science | 3-13-2003 | Reuters
Posted on 03/13/2003 1:46:22 PM PST by vannrox
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/864052/posts
Science and academia will correctly embrace the new information and factor it in to the chronology of events from which they construct their theories. I doubt few will discard the finding as nonsense neglecting the opportunities it provides. For there to be but one accepted theory about the origin of man, would disgrace our collective God given creative intellect.
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