Footprints redate occupation of Americas

Humans arrived in America 25,000 years earlier than previously thought - at least 40,000 years ago - footprints found near Mexico City have proved.

British and Mexican archaeologists said the discovery of the prints, made in volcanic ash near the town of Puebla, 80 miles south-east of Mexico City, will force a total rewrite of humanity's early migrations and is one of the most important archaeological finds of recent decades. . .

When combined with existing knowledge on prehistoric climate, the discovery suggests humans may have entered the Americas during a slightly less cold phase in the last Ice Age about 50,000 years ago. They would have walked over the ice-bound Bering Strait or island-hopped to Alaska via the Kuril and Aleutian chains of islands.

This means the migration into the Americas occurred at about the same time as the normally accepted date of the early Aboriginal colonisation of Australia and some archaeologists now believe that the first Americans were Australoid peoples closely related to the early Aborigines. . .

. . . it is also now conceivable that humans entered the Americas even earlier, perhaps during a much warmer spell about 70,000 years ago. It means archaeologists will now have to take more seriously two claims that a site in Brazil and another in Chile date from 50,000 and 33,000 years ago respectively.

UPDATE: The evidence grows more complex. They are old -- but too old. Are they footprints at all?

Posted by David on July 6, 2005 11:34 PM