More evidence of an earlier arrival…

Ancient Footprints Push Back Date of Human Arrival in the Americas Human footprints found in New Mexico are about 23,000 years old, a study reported, suggesting that people may have arrived long before the Ice Age’s glaciers melted. By Carl ZimmerSept. 23, 2021Updated 2:22 p.m. ETSign up for Science Times  Get stories that capture the wonders of nature, the cosmos and the human body. Get it sent to your inbox. Ancient human footprints preserved in the ground across the White Sands National Park in New Mexico are astonishingly old, scientists reported on Thursday, dating back about 23,000 years to the Ice Age. The results, if they hold up to scrutiny, would rejuvenate the scientific debate about how humans first spread across the Americas, implying that they did so at a time when massive glaciers covered much of their path. Researchers who have argued for such an early arrival hailed the new study as firm proof. “I think this is probably the biggest discovery about the peopling of America in a hundred years,” said Ciprian Ardelean, an archaeologist at Autonomous University of Zacatecas in Mexico who was not involved in the work. “I don’t know what gods they prayed to, but this is a dream find.” For decades, many archaeologists have maintained that humans spread across North and South America only at the end of the last ice age. They pointed to the oldest known tools, including spear tips, scrapers and needles, dating back about 13,000 years. The technology was known as Continue Reading →