According to modern dating technology, the oldest Homo sapiens' footprints in the world lie in South Africa and show that, 153,000 years ago, early bipedal humans were present in South Africa.
Oldest Known Homo Sapiens' Footprints
These 153,000-year-old Homo sapiens' footprints are now considered the species' oldest known footprints, Live Science reports. The unique findings are part of several tracks found in Africa in the past few decades.
Ever since 3.66 million-year-old tracks were found at the Laetoli site in Tanzania more than four decades ago, paleoanthropologists were able to discover over 100 walk trails that were preserved in mud, ash, and rock that humans' hominin ancestors left. These hominins cover extinct and modern humans as well as humans' ancestors that are closely related.
In a recent study published in the Ichnos journal, a global research team dedicated their efforts to uncovering the ages of seven recently pinpointed hominin ichnosites along the Cape South Coast of South Africa, The Jerusalem Post reports. Ichnosites are archaeological sites that have tracks that humans left.
Per Live Science, the South African ichnosites covered four that had hominin tracks, four with ammoglyphs, and one that had knee impressions. Ammoglyphs refer to human-made patterns, not just tracks, that have remained preserved.
Analyzing Ichnosites and Footprints
The researchers note that footprint evidence could be a vital addition to archaeological records. These tracks do not just indicate the presence of early humans moving through these areas individually or by group, but they also shed light on some activities that they once used to engage in.
Live Science adds that across South Africa, early evidence has been seen to point to modern human behavior, such as personal adornments, the usage of abstract symbolization, making complex tools of stone, using rock sites for shelters, and harvesting shellfish.
To date the track sites, the researchers made use of OSL. Such a method operates by estimating the time that has went by since the feldspar or quartz grains within or close to the trackways were exposed to sunlight. When the tracks that humans traversed quickly got buried, OSL could help date them quickly.
The footprint tracks found in the Garden Route National Park (GRNP) were found to date to 153,000 years ago, with a margin of 10,000 years. Though there have been footprints that were found to belong to other hominins across Europe, Asia, and Africa, this track site is now considered the oldest one that Homo sapiens made.
While most samples were found to date from 70,000 to 130,000 years ago, these tracks dated a whopping 153,000 years ago, as noted by first author and research associate Charles Helm from Nelson Mandela University's African Centre for Coastal Paleoscience.
The authors note that attributing the prints to a specific species is grounded in skeletal remains and archaeological artifacts compared to the track shape itself. They add, however, that not every site offers evidence that is conclusive, and so debates and controversies may still go on.
Nevertheless, Helm and Andrew Carr, a co-author of the study and a physical geographer from the University of Leicester, note that they suspect that other hominin ichnosites are waiting to be found on the south coast of Cape.
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