Researchers in New Mexico have found a series of footprints dating back around 23,000 years; oldest date yet for humans in North America.
What I find really interesting is just how human the activity was, shown by the footprints. They would have been made along the shore or a lake, by a family party.
Adults were walking, kids were running back and forth, at one point an adult, likely a woman, set down a little one to walk on its own.
Just an ordinary Sunday walk at the beach.
Back in 2009. The big news was when they dated the seeds in 2021, then the pollen and OSL in 2023. I can’t tell if there’s something new here or it was just a slow science journalism week.
I think this, given that there was a lecture on the subject last month which likely reignited interest.
Yep, they keep pushing the date of human occupation of North America back later and later.
That blows away some really bad hypotheses that even made it into textbooks.
That’s called science.
Yep. Lots of stuff is written down, recorded in text books and tomes and not one word of it is true.
It’s ok it’s accessible, to show at least what we’ve been mistaken of.
If new footprints change the way we go forth to learn more and what lead there were previous finds that seems like a positive.
Sure the odd duck is gonna glom on to some old book with a recipe to make gold and swear it is true.
It’s not supposed to be a gotcha, it is supposed to be a “here’s what I’ve
learned, where can we go from here?”
It’s not my area, but I recall there was some controversy when it comes to how long humans have been in the Americas. For a while, the Clovis civilization was thought to be the oldest group of people here and we have evidence for them dating back to 10,000 BC or so. I don’t think anyone’s career was ruined for suggesting pre-Clovis civilization, but it was an uphill battle changing minds.
@Northern_Piper, I’m in agreement with you. It’s always nice to see evidence from so long ago reminding us that people are just people.
Almost. Putting later disproved theories in textbooks is one thing, but not hypothesis with no evidence.
Some were labeled as crackpots, refused tenure, writings rejected, etc
Mind you some stuff is justly controversial- But still needs to be looked at not mocked-
Cerutti Mastodon site - Wikipedia.
But more solid stuff- now accepted-
The rib, from a tusked beast known as a mastodon, has been dated precisely to 13,800 years ago.
This places it before the so-called Clovis hunters, who many academics had argued were the North American continent’s original inhabitants.
…
In truth, the “Clovis first” model, which holds to the idea that America’s original human population swept across a land-bridge from Siberia some 13,000 years ago, has looked untenable for some time.
A succession of archaeological finds right across the United States and northern Mexico have indicated there was human activity much earlier than this - perhaps as early as 15-16,000 years ago.
The mastodon rib, however, really leaves the once cherished model with nowhere to go…Although scientists at the time correctly identified the specimen’s antiquity, adherents to the Clovis-first model questioned the dating and interpretation of the site…“You know, the Clovis-first model has been dying for some time,” he finished. “But there’s nothing harder to change than a paradigm, than long-standing thinking. When Clovis-First was first proposed, it was a very elegant model but it’s time to move on, and most of the archaeological community is doing just that.”
My major professor - Anthropology, specifically North American Archaeology - always said he thought a more accurate arrival date was 25,000 years ago or so.
Don’t you mean earlier? This whole thing is about footprints discovered in New Mexico that are far older than any other evidence of habitation found in America.
Sure. It’s like the air conditioning- when you want it cooler- do you turn it up or down?
But earlier works better. thanks.
I found a post from 2003, and even back then it was accepted that humans had populated the new world a least several thousand years before Clovis.