Ancient Footprints Discovered in Southwest US

In the American Southwest, old footmarks have been uncovered, and this has great consequences for the North American history of mankind. Researchers uncovered footprints in New Mexico’s White Sands National Park dated around 23,000 years ago, and they provide proof that people were longer than previously demonstrated on this continent.

“Archaeologists and researchers in allied fields have long sought to understand human colonization of North America. Questions remain about when and how people migrated, where they originated, and how their arrival affected the established fauna and landscape. Here, we present evidence from excavated surfaces in White Sands National Park (New Mexico, United States), where multiple in situ human footprints are stratigraphically constrained and bracketed by seed layers,” reads the study.

The discoveries indicate that humans in North America have been there for roughly two thousand years. Earlier in North America, discovered in Canada, the oldest recorded human footprint dates from around 13,000 years ago. Archaeologists were surprised when they discovered the world’s oldest footprints in New Mexico. The tracks date back almost 24,000 years, and they suggest that humans arrived in the United States much earlier than we thought.

Researchers claim that during the final high or the last glacial maximum of the Ice Age, kids and adolescents living in the region had petrified footprints. The ice sheets extending into New York City during that period blanketed the northern third of North America. The children are thought to have done it and also merely hung out for their elders.

The previous human beings coexisted with huge animals, including giant land sloths and mammals, in addition to surviving through an ice age, the researchers noted. Given the variety of landscapes of the old times and now, the explanation why kids were probably kept on the tracks rather than adults, is for sure that is well-known by current parents: youngsters seem to have always stumped around a lot.