Footprints in the Ash

[semillama]

Humans may have been walking around what is now central Mexico 40,000 years ago

"Footprints left in volcanic ash that fell in central Mexico’s Valsequillo Basin about 40,000 years ago are evidence that humans have inhabited the Americas far longer than previously confirmed, a new study suggests.

Analyses of three-dimensional laser scans of the imprints (example at right) confirm their human origin, says Silvia Gonzalez, a geoarchaeologist at Liverpool John Moores University in England."

However, a new analysis of the coarse-grained, print-ridden volcanic ash — which would have hardened quickly after it fell, says Gonzalez — strongly suggest the material fell around 40,000 years ago, she and her colleagues reported today in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union."

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/32728/title/Footprints_in_the_ash

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/download/id/32727/thumbnail/xx_large/name/HUMAN_PRINTS

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If true, this pretty much sticks the last nail in the coffin for the Clovis-first theory. The really weird thing is, it doesn't appear that pre-Clovis populations used stone projectile points, as no formal stone tools (to my knowledge) predate Clovis.

[HereSince1628]

1. Aren't stone tools predating Clovis associated with the Meadowcroft site?

I know there has been controversy about the possibility of coal contamination of that site, but I remember reading that there were stone tools found there.

[semillama]

10. Oh, yeah, there's stone tools

but what I meant by formal stone tools are things like the Clovis points.

Clovis point:



Compare with:

Pre-Clovis Meadowcroft bifacial tools:



Topper site tools:

[damntexdem]

2. Aww, I bet it was aliens with feet much like ours!

;-)

[Sequoia]

3. Personally, I think humans have always been here.

Sure some might've come across the B strait and others sailed over also.

[FiveGoodMen]

4. Walking among the dinosaurs, you mean?

[Sequoia]

5. I don't know about that...let's ask those creationists

Who think dinos were on the Ark. Seriously though, many Native Americans have always believed they were already here. But, we have to find "the proof." Nothing is believed until it's proven these days.

[FiveGoodMen]

6. Your post #3 said "Humans have always been here"

The key word is always.

I wouldn't buy the suggestion that humans evolved from apes separately in Africa and in the Americas.

Has to have started somewhere.

Now, if you meant, "Humans have been here a lot longer than we thought," that would be different.

[Sequoia]

7. But the continents were attached so who's to say that

it didn't happen here. After all there are cute little monkeys in South America. Far fetched and out on a limb here but we seem to keep finding human activity that goes back beyond what we already believed to be true. I have more of an imagination than knowledge of course. Which, according to Einstein, is better. :o)

[FiveGoodMen]

8. How long do you thing the human race has existed?

South America began to drift slowly westward from Africa as the South Atlantic Ocean opened, beginning about 130 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous, and resulting in open marine conditions by 110 million years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondwana

[HereSince1628]

9. New world and old world monkeys have distinct differences...

in anatomical and genetic terms, _Homo_, and the other "great" apes can be demonstrated to be more closely related to old world monkeys

The notion of an emergence of new world monkeys (let alone the emergence of _Homo_ in the western hemisphere) through vicariance events arising from continental drift would really challenges what is accepted as the geologic time frame for continental separation and the emergence of new world monkeys by many many many millions of years.