Posted on 04/10/2022 9:03:35 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Researchers excavated human footprints out of a small bluff next to a dried-up playa lake and radiocarbon-dated embedded seeds to around 23,000 years ago. Their results suggest that people entered the Americas thousands of years earlier than the accepted estimate.
...some of these prints could be tens of thousands of years old, making them potentially the best evidence yet that people reached the Americas far earlier than once believed. Radiocarbon dating of seeds surrounding the prints suggests that they were made during the Last Glacial Maximum, when massive ice sheets are thought to have blocked any passage from the Bering Land Bridge into southern North America...
White Sands National Park contains a vast windswept field of gypsum dunes where children go sand sledding and an alkali flat that stretches for miles. From around 36,000–19,000 years ago, this alkali flat, called Lake Otero, contained varying levels of water...
The researchers eventually found one promising site on the eastern edge of the alkali flat. They began excavating and discovered multiple layers of human footprints, as well as interspersed mammoth prints. Most importantly, the team uncovered seeds from an ancient ditch grass called Ruppia cirrhosa sprinkled within various layers. Radiocarbon dating of the seeds established the ages of the multiple layers that contained tracks at between 21,000 and 23,000 years old, long before the ice sheets retreated. While in recent years researchers have reported possible evidence for human occupation of North America at even earlier timepoints, the earliest well-accepted site of human activity in the Americas remains Monte Verde in Chile, which dates to around 15,000 BP, and many researchers remain unconvinced that humans entered the continents much earlier.
(Excerpt) Read more at the-scientist.com ...
“Close to the ancient footprints was an ancient note warning about global freezing.”
Made me laugh. Thx
Clovis? Didn't she co-star in "Young Frankenstein?"
Yes, Before Present; just to slap ya around some more, “Present” refers to the radiocarbon baseline, which is 1950, the year the technique was developed.
“They” worked slowly and carefully, and when the paper was new, the discovery was recent.
Bury her, anyway.
They like keeping us confused ;)
Exciting discovery, but at least one incongruity...
People walking around with bare feet during the glacial maximum?
Downtown Seattle had more than a half mile of ice on top of it 23,000 years ago.
By latitude, White Sands National Park is just 1,200 miles south of Seattle.
Besides the temperature, the last ice age reduced rain fall across the entire world. I have to wonder why White Sands had more standing water 23,000 years ago than it has today.
You should post your link, it’s an update from this I think.
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