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The study of preserved prints in New Mexico continues to give an idea of the first human movements in North America.
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A research team believes that the prints are more than 23,000 years old, confirming a more early study that dates the prints to 10,000 years older than it was previously thought.
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Tracking the steps gives modern scientists a view of ancient life.
The White Sands National Park has some of the most archaeologically rich sand in North America, and it is in this landscape in New Mexico that the largest prints ever found on the continent have been found. Recent research now dates these prints to about 23,000 years – about 10,000 years before it is believed that people existed in North America.
“The site in New Mexico has rewritten history textbooks, as we have found wonderful examples of human activity, the way people interact with each other, with the landscape and with animal life there,” said Sally Reynolds, Chief Paleocology Academician at the University of Bornemouth. “These prints provide a valuable window in life that our ancestors lived and how much they were like us.”
It was previously thought to be about 13,000 years old, a study in 2021 by US geological research researchers instead dates from the step about 23,000 years ago, using radio -carbon dating methods. However, the team wanted to confirm these discoveries and published another study in the magazine Science At the end of 2023, which confirmed the new “calibrated” aging of the prints with the dating of fossil pine pollen.
With pollen and plain grass seeds found both in the steps and in the same layer of hardened mud that found the prints, the team was able to confirm the new date of 23,000 years, showing that people were on the continent during the last maximum of the glacial. The team also uses optically stimulated fluorescence to examine the background radiation in quartz. The more energy in quartz, the older the find. This helped to confirm the date.
Matthew Bennett, professor and co -author of the University of Bournemouth University, said the team was pleased that after the initial survey was further studied, they were able to produce new results that “emphasize the accuracy of our original study and provide a compelling update to the movements and lifestyle of our ancestors.”
And these movements were enough. As it is chronic in a Smithsonian An article with Bennett, the prints of the white sand area show children who play close to puddles, hunters, tracing a giant lazy, and a young woman wearing a child and slipped into the mud – probably from the pursuit of a predator.
“There were hungry predators around, including terrible wolves and cats with a sword,” Bennett said, according to SmithsonianS “We can see where she slipped into the mud at certain points … We can also see the prints of the child where she put it, probably because she was tired and needed a rest.”
Some prints can be seen without technology, while others require a radar to find ground penetration.
“The prints left on the white sands give a picture of what is happening, teenagers interacting with younger children and adults,” Bennett says in a statement. “We can think of our ancestors as quite functional, hunting and surviving, but what we see here is the activity of the game, and for different ages they are gathering. A real idea of these early people.”
Bennett said that while the prints found in the area provide small glare about what life is like 23,000 years ago, the team hopes to find even more prints to tell a greater history of life in North America.
“The long -term heritage of the white sands,” he said, “is to direct the way to a new archive of evidence.”
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