Discovered in the Utah Desert: Human Footprints from 12,000 Years Ago
Introduction
So as we know that human evolution describes how extinct monkeys gave rise to modern humans on Earth. When seen from a zoological perspective, we are considered to be Homo sapiens, an upright, ground-dwelling species that most likely first appeared in Africa some 315,000 years ago. Although we are currently the only living members of the Hominini, or “human tribe,” other hominins such as Ardipithecus, Australopithecus, and other species of Homo predated us by millions of years, and our species also shared a time period with at least one other member of our genus, Homo neanderthalensis, according to a wealth of fossil evidence (the Neanderthals).
Furthermore, we and our ancestors have always coexisted with other apelike primates, ranging from the modern-day gorilla to the long-extinct Dryopithecus. Anthropologists and biologists worldwide agree that humans and extinct hominins are linked and that we and apes, both living and extinct, are likewise related. However, the precise nature of our evolutionary ties has been a source of controversy and research since the renowned British biologist Charles Darwin wrote his seminal books On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1879). (1871). Darwin never asserted as some of his Victorian contemporaries insisted, that “man was derived from the apes,” and current scientists would see such a claim as a pointless simplification — just as they would regard Darwin’s assertion as a useless simplification [3].
For example, we discovered one of the earliest footprints ever discovered, known as Eve’s footprint. Eve’s footprint is the common name for a collection of fossilized footprints discovered on the shore of Langebaan Lagoon in South Africa in 1995. They are thought to be from a female human and date back around 117,000 years. This makes them the oldest known modern human footprints. The estimated age of Eve’s footprint implies that the female person who left the marks on the ground would have lived within the current wide range of Mitochondrial Eve estimates.
Literature Review
Cornell researcher Thomas Urban uncovered human footprints thought to date from the end of the last ice age on the salt flats of the Air Force’s Utah Testing and Training Range (UTTR) in an upcoming study [1].
Urban and Daron Duke of the Far Western Anthropological Research Group were traveling to an archaeological hearth site at UTTR when Urban noticed what looked to be “ghost footprints” — traces that emerge abruptly for a brief period when moisture conditions are favorable, then vanish.
“It was a genuinely fortuitous discovery.” “As was the case with White Sands, the visible ghost tracks were just half of the narrative,” stated Thomas Urban, a Cornell University researcher, in a statement [1-2].
Duke unearthed a subset of the impressions, verifying that they were barefoot and that there were further prints that had not been discovered. In total, 88 footprints were documented, including both adults and children, providing insight into family life throughout the Pleistocene epoch.
“Based on excavations of many prints, we’ve discovered evidence of people with children aged five to 12 leaving bare footprints,” Duke stated in an Air Force news statement. “People appear to have been strolling in shallow water, with the sand fast infilling their print behind them, as seen on a beach, but behind the sand was a layer of mud that maintained the impression after infilling..[4]”
Duke believes the prints are more than 12,000 years old since there haven’t been any wetland conditions in at least 10,000 years in this isolated section of the Great Salt Lake desert that might have created such footprint traces.
Perhaps future Cornell University research teams will uncover other footprints like this one, bringing us one step closer to having a diversity of footprints available and discovering relationships between these various footprints.
Conclusion
In this article we have discussed a little bit about human evolution and also discussed the discovery in the Utah Desert: Human Footprints from 12,000 Years Ago. And we think the Cornell university research team will work harder and try to find some connections between different footprints which we have found now.
References
- https://archaeology.cornell.edu/news/ice-age-human-footprints-discovered-utah-desert?utm_campaign=fullarticle&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=inshorts
- https://www.timesnownews.com/viral/human-footprints-dating-back-12000-years-to-ice-age-discovered-in-utah-desert-photos-surface-article-93164968
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve%27s_footprint
- https://indiaeducationdiary.in/cornell-university-ice-age-human-footprints-discovered-in-utah-desert/
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