Posted on 07/05/2005 3:38:09 AM PDT by Renfield
A plastic replica of a 40,000-year-old, size eight foot has shattered previous theories of the identity of the first humans to walk in the Americas.
Scientists made the foot from tracks left on the shore of an ancient volcanic lake in central Mexico.
The traditional view is that the first settlers walked across the Bering Strait, from Russia to Alaska, at the end of the last ice age around 11,500 to 11,000 years ago.
But the discovery of footprints in the Valsequillo Basin by a British-led team provides new evidence that humans settled in the Americas as early as 40,000 years ago, suggesting that there were several migration waves at different times by different groups.
The team, led by Dr Silvia Gonzalez from Liverpool John Moores University, has completed dating the footprints, which Dr Gonzalez found in an abandoned quarry with her Liverpool colleague Prof David Huddart and Prof Matthew Bennett, of Bournemouth University, in September 2003. The findings supported the theory that the first colonists might have been seafarers who took an "island hopping" route from Australia and Polynesia, when sea levels were lower, to the west coast, said Prof Bennett.
"There was a lot of sea ice at this time in the northern Pacific. People could have come around on the edge of the sea ice and then down the western seaboard of North America to Baja California and to Mexico," he said.
The first stage of their research, on show this week at the Royal Society in London, analysed 269 footprints, both animal and human.
DNA tests are being conducted on the remains of ancient Americans to see if genetics can help to solve the puzzle. New funding of £212,000 from the Natural Environment Research Council will allow the team to carry out more extensive investigations and to calculate the height, pace and stride of the human population present 40,000 years ago.
"The footprints were preserved as trace fossils in volcanic ash along what was the shoreline of an ancient volcanic lake," said Dr Gonzalez. They were scanned using laser technology and reproduced using rapid prototyping technology.
A plastic footprint, was it stamped made in China?
Was it heading north?
I thought it was 9000 years ago....
It is funny, you can create a fossil in a lab. There was a man on TV recently who had some fossils that had been carbon dated to be 40 million years old. But when they were cracked open, one had a battery in it, one had a modern hat, and one had a modern hammer. He said carbon dating is very much in question and full of error.
My daughter who is a hydrogeology major, a senior at UT, said it is EASY to create a fossil in the lab, and it would fool the 'experts'.
The pastor at the church I attended when a teenager said that doing anything on a Sunday except praying and worshiping was a sin – until he started playing golf.
I guess this will make the claim of 200,000 years at the Calico site a little less far-fetched.
Let me do the first guess of who these people are...Jomon or related to them.
BTW, I'm 6.0 feet and wear an 8.5 size shoe.
My, you have tiny feet. I'm 5'11" and wear size 13.
If your daughter told you that carbon dating is effient or even used to derive dates 40-my ago, demand your money back from the school system.
Another sacred cow bites the dust.
Thanks, will add to the catalog, but will ping the following, which is older:
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
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Yup. My whole family is tall and have small feet and hands.
Renfield got it right. They are dating the stone the footprint is part of, not the footprint. Pretty good science.
My blogpost on this article:
Kinda makes you question the entire notion of "native Americans."
Finally scientists are being allowed to examine the "Kennewick Man" remains, despite the obstructionist tactics of so called native American activists. I think this has more to do with their attempt to suppress their own illicit historic past than any attempt to "protect their ancestors."
America has been peopled many times by many different branches of humanity. The modern PC attempt to inflict guilt on the latest immigrants is deluded and has more to do with anti-western bigotry than it does with preserving any cultural identity.
We (humans from wherever) have been here a long time. The "experts" don't have a clue how people spread across the world or from where, and they don't have the slightest idea of when. the very notion of "first dibs" is obscene.
At least western European civilization rejected human sacrifice, which was the culture of the dominant "civilizations" at the time of our "invasion."
Human progress is human progress. Don't tell me that cutting the heart out of a sacrifical victim is somehow "pure" and defeating an army of head hunters (OK, heart hunters) is somehow "genocide."
Also a Cherokee does not look at all like a Sioux.
RightWhale, do you remember a few years ago when I asked you the retorical question, "I wonder how many humans were killed during the Barringer Crater impact, 50,000 years ago."
Not such a quirky question all of a sudden.
Were these footprints made by Modern Humans or perhaps Homo-Erectus?
From what I have seen it is not hard for nature to completely wipe any evidence of human or any other habitation from the landscape in just a few years. If something is buried in a dry or cold location, it may be preserved as a fossil, but that is rare. If exposed to the weather even a stone pyramid would be nothing but a hill in 10,000 years. Roads disappear, cities disappear, bones disappear. It would be highly unusual for any sign to remain of somebody that lived in Arizona 50,000 years ago. There could have been millions living there.
On the subject of migrations, although in a very different part of the world, The August National Geographic has an article on some cave paintings of about 10,000 BC in Borneo that tie those people with the early Australians.
I got it yesterday...haven't read it yet.
About the 40k year old footprints, someone's numbers are really off if they are modern. If they are Homo-Erectus then, 'things' (present theories) are really gonna take some revisions. This is a significent find and I can't understand why it's not getting wider coverage.
Me neither, as it sounds interesting. But you must realize that sometimes archaeologists move slowly (actually some of them move in mysterious ways, but that's another story).
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