Posted on 07/21/2014 9:29:57 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
About 400 footprints were first discovered in the cave in 1965. Scientists initially attributed the impressions to a man, woman and child who lived 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. But radiocarbon measurements of two cave bear bones excavated just below the footprints now indicate that Homo sapiens made these tracks around 36,500 years ago, say anthropologist David Webb of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania and his colleagues. Analyses of 51 footprints that remain — cave explorers and tourists have destroyed the rest — indicate that six or seven individuals, including at least one child, entered the cave after a flood had coated its floor with sandy mud, the researchers report July 7 in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
Published ages for other H. sapiens footprints in Europe and elsewhere go back no more than 33,000 years. At a 2011 conference, scientists said that H. sapiens tracks at Tanzania’s Engare Sero site were 120,000 years old. Those findings have not been published yet, suggesting to Webb a problem with dating or footprint authenticity. Nearly 1-million-year-old footprints of modern human ancestors were recently documented at a British site.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
The question I have is whether the bear bones show these bare-footed folks were contesting ownership of the cave with cave bears—and winning.
Before RC dating, stratigraphy was used exclusively. Since the bear bones were immediately below, using RC dating on the bones dates the strata in which they’re found, and the millimeters of debris on top of them is likely to have accumulated in a short period of time — not the over 10000 years that represents the difference between the old estimate and this RC date.
OK. So they dated the bones located under the footprint. Why couldn’t the bones have been there for thousands of years before someone stepped into the debris. Thanks for your help and patience.
I explained that already, and I’m done with it.
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