• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Prehistoric Footprints & The Story Of Humanity

Footprints from the Stone Age: How a prehistoric volcanic eruption helped preserve remarkable evidence of daily life 13,000 years ago
The long-lost secrets of a Stone Age African tribe are being revealed — courtesy of a prehistoric volcanic eruption.
Hundreds of ancient footprints, preserved in volcanic mud, are yielding extraordinary insights into daily life 13,000 years ago.

The ongoing study of the site in Tanzania is one of the most important investigations into prehistoric human behaviour and social dynamics ever carried out.
A detailed analysis of the prints, carried out by US scientists, has revealed that the sex-based division of labour, which has affected and afflicted human society for most of history, probably had its roots back in the Stone Age.
The footprints were made by between 22 and 32 people as they walked (and sometimes ran) across freshly deposited volcanic mud near the banks of a large saltwater lake in what is now northern Tanzania.
(c) The Independent '20
 
Footprints discovered around a former lake in Saudi Arabia suggest modern humans were moving through the area circa 30,000 or more years earlier than previously believed.
Seven footprints may be the oldest evidence of humans on the Arabian Peninsula

The prints were likely made by people stopping to drink at an ancient lake, researchers say

Footprints discovered at what was once a rain-fed lake in Saudi Arabia’s Nefud Desert suggest that humans on the move made a pit stop there more than 100,000 years ago.

The seven human footprints are likely the oldest evidence of Homo sapiens on the Arabian Peninsula, a new study finds. Dating sediment from above and below the foot impressions places them around 112,000 to 121,000 years old, researchers report September 18 in Science Advances. The previous oldest evidence of humans in the region dates to at least 86,000 years ago ...

Elsewhere in Saudi Arabia, researchers have found stone tools like those made by African H. sapiens that date to around 125,000 years ago (SN: 1/27/11), raising the likelihood that the newly discovered footprints were made by humans.

Ancient H. sapiens groups likely used the site, known as Alathar, as a watering hole and place to forage for food in surrounding grasslands, say biologist Mathew Stewart of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany and colleagues. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/footprints-oldest-evidence-humans-arabian-peninsula
 
This set of prehistoric footprints - the longest track yet discovered anywhere - seems to tell a story of adults walking 'there and back' with a toddler.
Fossil footprints tell story of prehistoric parent's journey

Hungry giant predators, treacherous mud and a tired, probably cranky toddler - more than 10,000 years ago, that was the stuff of every parent's nightmare.

Evidence of that type of frightening trek was recently uncovered, and at nearly a mile it is the longest known trackway of early-human footprints ever found.

The discovery shows the archaeological findings of footprint tracks at White Sands National Park in New Mexico. The tracks run for 1.5 kilometers (.93 miles) and show a single set of footprints that are joined, at point, by the footprints of a toddler. The paper's authors have shown how the footprint tracks, as well as the distinctive shapes they left, show a woman (or possibly an adolescent male) carrying a toddler in their arms, shifting the toddler from left to right, and occasionally putting the child down. ...

The tracks were found in a dried-up lakebed, which contains a range of other footprints dating from 11,550 to 13,000 years ago. The lakebed's formerly muddy surface preserved footprints for thousands of years as it dried up.

... Sloths and mammoths were found to have intersected the human tracks after they were made, showing that this terrain hosted both humans and large animals at the same time, making the journey taken by this individual and child a dangerous one.

The recently discovered footprints were noted for the straightness, as well as being repeated a few hours later on a return journey - only this time without a child in tow, which can be seen from the tracks. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-10/cu-fft101420.php
 
This set of prehistoric footprints - the longest track yet discovered anywhere - seems to tell a story of adults walking 'there and back' with a toddler.

This Smithsonian Magazine article also describes these New Mexico footprints and provides some additional fun facts ...
Fossilized Footprints Found in New Mexico Track Traveler With Toddler in Tow

Prehistoric tracks detail a moment when mammoths, sloths and humans crossed paths

... The fossilized footprints show that at least two large animals crossed the human tracks between the outbound and return trips. Prints left by a sloth suggest the animal was aware of the humans who had passed the same way before it. As the sloth approached the trackway, it reared up on its hind legs to sniff for danger before moving forward. A mammoth who also walked across the tracks, meanwhile, shows no sign of having noticed the humans’ presence. ...

White Sands National Park contains the largest collection of Ice Age human and animal tracks in the world. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...ints-track-adult-and-toddlers-trip-180976057/

The published research report (abstract only) can be accessed at:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379120305722
 
Stormy weather and high tides on a Spanish beach have uncovered what palaeontologists believe are the oldest examples of Neanderthal footprints from the late Pleistocene epoch.

-methode-times-prod-web-bin-9d650974-8d7d-11eb-8f69-0367b6f4fca7.jpg

Two biologists walking along the beach in the south last June discovered the site of an ancient watering hole where animals and the ancestors of Homo sapiens came to drink, hunt, scavenge for seafood or just frolic in the water. Some of the footprints are thought to have been left by a child that was “jumping irregularly as though dancing”.

At least 87 footprints dating back about 100,000 years were found on Matalascañas beach between Huelva and Cadiz.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...-feet-leave-a-mark-on-spanish-beach-59tqnxn3c

maximus otter
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The fossil footprints of a group of three dozen Neanderthals in southern Spain include evidence of children at the shore.
100,000-year-old Neanderthal footprints show children playing in the sand

Some 100,000 years ago, an extended family of 36 Neanderthals walked along a beach, with the kids jumping and frolicking in the sand, scientists report after analyzing the beachgoers' fossilized footprints in what is now southern Spain.

"We have found some areas where several small footprints appeared grouped in a chaotic arrangement," said Eduardo Mayoral, a paleontologist at the University of Huelva and lead author of the study, which was published online March 11 in the journal Scientific Reports.

The footprints "could indicate an area of passage of very young individuals, as if they were playing or loitering on the shore of the nearby waterlogged area," Mayoral told Live Science in an email. ...

FULL STORY:
https://www.livescience.com/neanderthal-footprints-children-playing-on-beach.html

PUBLISHED RESEARCH REPORT:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-83413-8
 
"A set of ancient footprints has been found on a Greek island. They are extremely old – 5.7 million years – yet they seem to have been made by one of our hominin ancestors.
Newly published research incidates the Trachilos footprints are even older than originally believed. The controversies relating to these footprints, their identification, and their implications continue. One such implication is challenging the prevailing 'out of Africa' interpretation of the fossil record known to date.
Ancient Tracks May Be The Oldest Hominin Footprints Ever Found, Scientists Say

... As reported in 2017, a team of researchers found and analyzed a series of over 50 footprints on Trachiolos Beach on the Greek island Crete, which were thought to potentially be left by an ancient hominin-like creature from 5.7 million years ago.

A new study published this week now suggests that those hominin-like tracks are even older still – potentially as old as 6.05 million years old, making it 350,000 years older than originally thought.

There's no evidence of Homo sapiens in the fossil record anywhere before 300,000 years ago, and even our sister species Homo neanderthalensis only appeared around 430,000 years ago, so we're talking about our great-great-great (probably add a few more greats) ancestors here.

Australopithecus afarensis, an ancient primate better known from a preserved skeleton nicknamed Lucy, lived as early as 3.9 million years ago, so we're getting closer to the age range there.

In fact, this footprint is so old that the team suggest that Graecopithecus freybergi, a primate with tooth specimens thought to be 7.2 million years old (and potentially the oldest direct ancestor of humans, soon after our lineage parted ways with chimpanzees) could have had something to do with the footprints.

"We cannot rule out a connection between the producer of the tracks and the possible pre-human Graecopithecus freybergi," said University of Tübingen paleontologist Madelaine Böhme. ...

Not everyone agrees that it's an ancient hominin though, and when it comes to footprints, sometimes it can be hard to confirm an answer.

"This interpretation has been controversial, and several counter-interpretations have been made," the team writes. ...

But the researchers maintain that none of the arguments have ruled out these tracks belonging to an early human ancestor like G. freybergi. ...

Using paleomagnetic and micropaleontological methods at Trachiolos Beach, the team analyzed 57 samples, which dated the footprints to older than previously calculated – approximately 6.05 million years ago.

These footprints ... were found on the island of Crete – not Africa. Although Crete would have been attached to mainland Greece at this point, it still throws up even more questions about where ancient hominins first evolved and adds some doubt to the commonly known 'out of Africa' theory.

As the researchers explain in their paper, "the evolutionary history and dispersal patterns of hominins are matters of debate".

"Despite numerous publications suggesting an origin in Africa, there are evidences that the earliest hominins might have evolved in Eurasia. Evidence for a Miocene hominin presence in Europe includes both body and trace fossils," they add. ...

It looks like we're still discovering just how tangled our family tree can be.

The research has been published in Scientific Reports.
FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/new-da...-are-the-oldest-hominin-footprints-ever-found
 
Here are the bibliographic details and abstract for the published report on the Trachilos footprints. The full paper is accessible at the link below.


Kirscher, U., El Atfy, H., Gärtner, A. et al.
Age constraints for the Trachilos footprints from Crete.
Sci Rep 11, 19427 (2021).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-98618-0

Abstract
We present an updated time frame for the 30 m thick late Miocene sedimentary Trachilos section from the island of Crete that contains the potentially oldest hominin footprints. The section is characterized by normal magnetic polarity. New and published foraminifera biostratigraphy results suggest an age of the section within the Mediterranean biozone MMi13d, younger than ~ 6.4 Ma. Calcareous nannoplankton data from sediments exposed near Trachilos and belonging to the same sub-basin indicate deposition during calcareous nannofossil biozone CN9bB, between 6.023 and 6.727 Ma. By integrating the magneto- and biostratigraphic data we correlate the Trachilos section with normal polarity Chron C3An.1n, between 6.272 and 6.023 Ma. Using cyclostratigraphic data based on magnetic susceptibility, we constrain the Trachilos footprints age at ~ 6.05 Ma, roughly 0.35 Ma older than previously thought. Some uncertainty remains related to an inaccessible interval of ~ 8 m section and the possibility that the normal polarity might represent the slightly older Chron C3An.2n. Sediment accumulation rate and biostratigraphic arguments, however, stand against these points and favor a deposition during Chron C3An.1n.

SOURCE / FULL REPORT: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-98618-0
 
Here are the bibliographic details and abstract for the published report on the Trachilos footprints. The full paper is accessible at the link below.


Kirscher, U., El Atfy, H., Gärtner, A. et al.
Age constraints for the Trachilos footprints from Crete.
Sci Rep 11, 19427 (2021).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-98618-0

Abstract
We present an updated time frame for the 30 m thick late Miocene sedimentary Trachilos section from the island of Crete that contains the potentially oldest hominin footprints. The section is characterized by normal magnetic polarity. New and published foraminifera biostratigraphy results suggest an age of the section within the Mediterranean biozone MMi13d, younger than ~ 6.4 Ma. Calcareous nannoplankton data from sediments exposed near Trachilos and belonging to the same sub-basin indicate deposition during calcareous nannofossil biozone CN9bB, between 6.023 and 6.727 Ma. By integrating the magneto- and biostratigraphic data we correlate the Trachilos section with normal polarity Chron C3An.1n, between 6.272 and 6.023 Ma. Using cyclostratigraphic data based on magnetic susceptibility, we constrain the Trachilos footprints age at ~ 6.05 Ma, roughly 0.35 Ma older than previously thought. Some uncertainty remains related to an inaccessible interval of ~ 8 m section and the possibility that the normal polarity might represent the slightly older Chron C3An.2n. Sediment accumulation rate and biostratigraphic arguments, however, stand against these points and favor a deposition during Chron C3An.1n.

SOURCE / FULL REPORT: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-98618-0
Absolutely astonishing.
Quite similar to the African Laetoli footprints, but possibly a mind-blowing 2.5 million years older.
Hominin history just becomes curioser and curioser with each new discovery.
 
Two things.

Bears do not walk upright. I think that has been known a very long time.

They are plantigrade; the only thing they have in common with human locomotion?

Bears in Africa? (Outside the Atlas, of course?)
 
On a similar note, I just saw a New Scientist headline: "Stone tools attributed to prehistoric humans may in fact have been made by horses."
 
This Live Science article provides a bit more detail about the most interesting (IMHO) aspect of the mystery footprints - the fact they seem to have resulted from cross-stepping (placing one foot in front of the other). This cross-stepping is the strongest clue ruling out known bears and apes as the footprints' sources.
Unknown human ancestor may have walked a bit like a bear on its hind legs

Ancient footprints reveal a mysterious relative of humans may have lived at the same time and in the same area as the famous human ancestor "Lucy" in Tanzania. Strangely, these enigmatic tracks possess an unusual cross-stepping gait where one leg crossed over the other during walking, a new study finds.

The oldest solid evidence of upright walking among hominins — the group that includes humans, our ancestors and our closest evolutionary relatives — are tracks discovered at Laetoli in northern Tanzania in 1978. The footprints date back about 3.66 million years, and previous research suggested they were made by Australopithecus afarensis, the species that ranks among the leading candidates for direct ancestors of the human lineage and includes the famed 3.2 million-year-old "Lucy."

Other footprints discovered at the nearby "site A" in 1976 proved more enigmatic. One possibility was that these unusually shaped tracks — five consecutive footprints — were left by an unknown hominin. Another was that they were made by a bear walking on its hind legs. ...

Curiously, this hominin walked with an unusual cross-stepping gait — each foot crossed over the body's midline to touch down in front of the other foot.

"The ability of this individual to demonstrate cross-stepping is actually one of the additional lines of evidence that Laetoli A was made by a hominin" ... Primates that primarily walk on all fours, such as chimps, "lack the necessary anatomical adaptations in their hips and knees to allow them to maintain their balance while placing one foot across the midline past the other."

Although humans typically do not cross-step, "it does happen occasionally ... It can be used as a strategy to help walk across uneven or slippery surfaces." ...
FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/unknown-human-ancestor-footprints-walked-near-lucy
 

Mysterious Footprints Suggest Neanderthals Climbed a Volcano Right After It Erupted


According to legend, the devil once took a walk down the side of a volcano in southern Italy, each step preserved forever in solid rock.

Footprints-CiampateDelDiavolo.jpg

The tracks are known as the "Ciampate del Diavolo"' or "Devil's Trail" – but details published in 2020 reveal a less diabolical yet far more interesting story on how they came to be.

The mysterious footprints are well known to those living near Roccamonfina, an extinct volcano in southern Italy that hasn't erupted in tens of thousands of years.

Since 2001, researchers have sought to explain the dozens of impressions left by a small group of human ancestors and even a few animals snaking their way down the mountainside.

But a paper published in January 2020 suggested some individuals were actually heading back up.

Over recent years numerous expeditions have provided detailed measurements on a total of 67 indentations left by the scuffle of feet, hands, and legs, all divided across three distinct tracks headed away from the mountain's summit.

Thanks to the contributions by a team of scientists from institutes across Italy, we obtained details on a further 14 prints – these even larger than the others – some of which head up the mountain rather than down.

Radiometric and geological dating of the various rock strata have already established that the imprints were cast in the soft blanket of ash left in the wake of an eruption around 350,000 years ago, making them some of the oldest preserved human footprints on record.

https://www.sciencealert.com/myster...hals-climbed-a-volcano-right-after-it-erupted

maximus otter
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Newly-discovered "ghost" footprints in the Utah desert are believed to represent human activity at least 10,000 years ago.
Ancient 'Ghost Footprints' in Utah Are The Find of a Lifetime, Researchers Say

Archaeologists recently stumbled upon a set of mysterious 'ghost footprints' in the salt flats of a Utah desert.

These unusual ancient tracks get their eerie name not because they are from an ethereal realm, but due to their earthly composition: They become visible only after it rains and the footprints fill with moisture and become darker in color, before disappearing again after they dry out in the sun.

Researchers accidentally discovered the unusual impressions in early July as they drove to another nearby archaeological site at Hill Air Force Base in Utah's Great Salt Lake Desert.

The team initially only found a handful of footprints, but a thorough sweep of the surrounding area using ground-penetrating radar (GPR) revealed at least 88 individual footprints belonging to a range of adults and children, potentially as young as 5 years old. ...

The ghostly prints were left by bare human feet at least 10,000 years ago when the area was still a vast wetland. However, researchers suspect that the tracks could date back as far as 12,000 years ago during the final stretch of the last ice age during the Pleistocene epoch (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago). ...

The discovery of so many ancient footprints is a "once-in-a-lifetime discovery," Anya Kitterman, the cultural resource manager at Hill Air Force Base who oversaw the archaeological work, said in a statement. "We found so much more than we bargained for."

However, the discovery has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal because researchers are still analyzing the footprints. ...

Less than a mile (1.6 kilometers) away from where the tracks were uncovered, a previous research group uncovered a hunter-gatherer camp dating to 12,000 years ago, where the humans who left the prints might have lived.

Archaeological finds at the site included an ancient fireplace, stone tools used for cooking, a pile of more than 2,000 animal bones, and charred tobacco seeds, which are the earliest evidence of tobacco use in humans. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/these-...s-only-appear-in-a-utah-desert-after-it-rains
 
Newly-discovered "ghost" footprints in the Utah desert are believed to represent human activity at least 10,000 years ago.

FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/these-...s-only-appear-in-a-utah-desert-after-it-rains

More on the Utah footprints.

Footprints laid down by Ice Age hunter-gatherers and recently discovered in a US desert are shedding new light on North America's earliest human inhabitants.

Dozens of fossilized prints found in dried-up riverbeds in the western state of Utah reveal more details about how the continent's original occupants lived more than 12,000 years ago—just as the frozen planet was starting to thaw.

The fossils could have remained unnoticed if not for a chance glance out of a moving car as researchers Daron Duke and Thomas Urban drove through Hill Air Force Base chatting about footprints.

"We were talking about, 'What would they look like?'" Duke told AFP. "And he said, 'Kind of like that out the window.'"

What the men had found turned out to be 88 distinct prints left by a mixture of adults and children.

"They vary between just looking like discolored patches on the ground and... little pop-ups, little pieces of dirt around them or on them. But they look like footprints," Duke said.

The discovery was followed by a painstaking few days of very careful digging—with Duke sometimes lying on his belly—to ensure that what they were looking at was as old as it appeared.

"What I found was bare feet of people... that had stepped in what looks to be shallow water where there was a mud sub-layer," Duke explained. ...

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-ice-age-footprints-north-america-early.html
 
Mesolithic footprints of both humans and animals can be found along the coastline around Formby (UK).
Superhighway of ancient human and animal footprints in England provides an 'amazing snapshot of the past'

Thousands of years ago, a swath of land along what is now the western coast of England served as a superhighway for humans and animals alike. Today, the ebb and flow of each passing tide reveals more of the ancient footprints that these long-gone travelers stamped into the once mud-caked route.

Reminders of their travels can be seen along a nearly 2-mile-long (3 kilometers) stretch of coastline near Formby, England. The footprint beds show how, as glaciers melted and sea levels rose after the last ice age ended around 11,700 years ago, humans and animals were forced inland, thus forming a hub of human and animal activity seen in the commingled footprints.

In a new study published in the October issue of Nature Ecology and Evolution (opens in new tab), researchers found that the trackways, some of which are more than 8,000 years old, date from the Mesolithic period, or Middle Stone Age (15,000 B.C. to 50 B.C.) to medieval times (from A.D. 476 to A.D. 1450). Researchers recovered seeds from alder, birch and spruce trees scattered within the layers of the route and radiocarbon-dated them to pinpoint the age of the tracks.

In total, there are a dozen "well-preserved" footprint beds, some of which are stacked, creating roughly 36 exposed layers, or "outcrops." These patchworks of prints contain foot impressions from not only humans but a variety of animals, including aurochs (an extinct species of ox), red deer, wild boars, wolves, lynx and cranes. ...

However, the discovery of footprint impressions "isn't unique to the area," she said. One nearby archaeological site contains 900,000-year-old human prints (opens in new tab) exposed during a 2013 storm in Norfolk, located about 250 miles (400 km) to the southeast of Formby. But what makes the Formby site special is that it reveals how humans and animals lived together thousands of years ago. ...
FULL STORY (With Photos): https://www.livescience.com/ancient-human-animal-footprints-england
PUBLISHED RESEARCH REPORT: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-022-01856-2.epdf
 
The Heidelberg people likely made these footprints.

Researchers have discovered the earliest examples of human footprints in Germany. They're so old, it's unlikely they were made by any species live today.

Stretching back some 300,000 years through time, it's thought they were made not by Homo sapiens, but by the ancient (and now extinct) 'Heidelberg people' (or Homo heidelbergensis).


The impressions provide researchers with a fascinating glimpse into the way early humans lived, discovered alongside animal footprints in the Schöningen Paleolithic site in Lower Saxony, located in northwest Germany.

We know that H. heidelbergensis were capable hunters, and their ancestry stretches back even further than the Neanderthals. In fact, they're considered to be the last common ancestors of Neanderthals and us.

Big fossil footprint


One of the hominin footprints described in the study. (Senckenberg)


"For the first time, we conducted a detailed investigation of the fossil footprints from two sites in Schöningen," says archaeologist Flavio Altamura, from the University of Tübingen in Germany.

https://www.sciencealert.com/oldest...-hint-at-our-ancestors-lives-300000-years-ago
 
World’s oldest Homo sapiens footprint identified on South Africa’s Cape south coast

Today the African tally for dated hominin ichnosites (a term that includes both tracks and other traces) older than 50,000 years stands at 14. These can conveniently be divided into an East African cluster (five sites) and a South African cluster from the Cape coast (nine sites). There are a further ten sites elsewhere in the world.

In Ichnos, the international journal of trace fossils, we provided the ages of seven newly dated hominin ichnosites that we have identified in the past five years on South Africa’s Cape south coast. These sites now form part of the “South African cluster” of nine sites.

We found that the sites ranged in age; the most recent dates back about 71,000 years. The oldest, which dates back 153,000 years, is one of the more remarkable finds recorded in this study: it is the oldest footprint thus far attributed to our species, Homo sapiens.

file-20230515-12409-7oogjm.JPG


The 153,000 year old track was found in the Garden Route National Park, west of the coastal town of Knysna on the Cape south coast.

https://theconversation.com/worlds-...fied-on-south-africas-cape-south-coast-205310

maximus otter
 
World’s oldest Homo sapiens footprint identified on South Africa’s Cape south coast

Today the African tally for dated hominin ichnosites (a term that includes both tracks and other traces) older than 50,000 years stands at 14. These can conveniently be divided into an East African cluster (five sites) and a South African cluster from the Cape coast (nine sites). There are a further ten sites elsewhere in the world.

In Ichnos, the international journal of trace fossils, we provided the ages of seven newly dated hominin ichnosites that we have identified in the past five years on South Africa’s Cape south coast. These sites now form part of the “South African cluster” of nine sites.

We found that the sites ranged in age; the most recent dates back about 71,000 years. The oldest, which dates back 153,000 years, is one of the more remarkable finds recorded in this study: it is the oldest footprint thus far attributed to our species, Homo sapiens.

file-20230515-12409-7oogjm.JPG


The 153,000 year old track was found in the Garden Route National Park, west of the coastal town of Knysna on the Cape south coast.

https://theconversation.com/worlds-...fied-on-south-africas-cape-south-coast-205310

maximus otter

Interesting find, but I would question how they can surmise these were left by "anatomically modern humans" just from the footprint.
Neanderthal feet are "mostly indistinguishable from those of Homo sapiens" and even going back a couple of million years, the feet of Homo Ergaster certainly look human. It's only when you go way back to Australopithecines, with their more chimp-like feet, that you can see marked differences.
This makes the extremely ancient (6 mya) hominin footprints found on Crete, and tentatively attributed to Graecopithecus freyberg, even more astonishing, as they clearly show "a parallel big toe".

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...nts-dated-to-605-million-years-ago-180978889/
 
This amazing article appeared on today's Quora.

The Huaorani tribe, also known as Waorani or Waos, is an indigenous group residing in Eastern Ecuador within the Amazon rainforest.
The combination of a very restricted gene pool (< 4,000), an arboreal lifestyle and constant exposure to the challenging environment, has resulted in the evolutionary adaptation of extreme flattening of their feet, including a semi-opposable big toe.

toes.png


Their main prey are monkeys and, obviously, the tribesmen who are most adept at climbing trees and gripping onto branches using their feet, leaving the hands free to use weapons (spears and blowpipes), have an evolutionary advantage and are more likely to win the greatest share of the food and to pass on their genes. If the Huaorani are allowed to continue their lifestyle undisturbed for say another thousand generations, would that big toe become fully-opposable?

Were footprints from the Huaorani tribe to be found in say 6 million year-old strata, like those discovered on Crete, I doubt they would be attributed to a human ancestor, let alone homo sapiens!

https://romanee.eyelash.ps/huaorani-tribe-feet/
 
Interesting find.

Two trails of ancient human footprints pressed into a beach in Morocco form one of the largest and best-preserved trackways in the world.

Researchers happened upon the footprint site near the northern tip of North Africa in 2022 while studying boulders at a nearby pocket beach, according to a study published Jan. 23 in the journal Scientific Reports.

"Between tides, I said to my team that we should go north to explore another beach," study lead author Mouncef Sedrati, an associate professor of coastal dynamics and geomorphology at the University of Southern Brittany in France, told Live Science. "We were surprised to find the first print. At first, we weren't convinced it was a footprint, but then we found more of the trackway."

Analysis of the site, which is the only known human trackway site of its kind in North Africa and the Southern Mediterranean, revealed two trails containing a total of 85 human footprints stamped into the beach by a group of at least five early modern humans.

The team used optically stimulated luminescence dating, a technique that determines when specific minerals on or near an artifact were last exposed to heat or sunlight. Based on the age of the fine grains of quartz that make up the bulk of the gently sloped beach's sand, researchers determined that a multigenerational group of Homo sapiens walked on the beach roughly 90,000 years ago, creating the pathways. The event took place during the Late Pleistocene, also known as the last ice age, which ended around 11,700 years ago, according to the study.

https://www.livescience.com/archaeo...of-the-oldest-and-best-preserved-in-the-world
 
Back
Top