Scientists have confirmed the age of the oldest human traces in North America – study
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A new study supports the hypothesis that discovered human footprints in the state of New Mexico are the oldest evidence of human presence on the American continent.
The Associated Press writes about it.
Footprints found on the edge of an ancient lake in White Sands National Park, USA, have caused controversy among archaeologists. They are dated to the period from 21 to 23 thousand years ago.
This age was first reported in the journal Science in 2021. However, some scientists disagreed with this thesis.
| Photo: Footprints discovered in the park/Bournemouth University |
Questions centered on whether the aquatic plant seeds used for the initial dating could have absorbed ancient carbon from the lake – which, in theory, could throw off radiocarbon dating, a dating method based on determining relative isotope abundances 14C, for thousands of years.
However, a recent study provides 2 additional pieces of evidence in favor of an older age. It used two completely different materials from the place where the tracks were found: pollen from ancient conifers and quartz grains.
The established age challenged the established belief that humans reached the Americas only a few thousand years before rising sea levels closed the Bereng Strait bridge between Russia and Alaska about 15,000 years ago.
Albuquerque-based independent archaeological geologist Thomas Stafford says he used to be skeptical, but the new evidence has changed his mind.
“If three completely different methods converge in the same age range, that’s very important”he added.
In a new study, 75,000 grains of pure pollen were isolated from the same sedimentary layer that contained human traces. The scientists also studied the accumulated damage in the crystal lattices of the ancient quartz grains to estimate their age.
Researchers also pay attention to traces. Anything left behind by humans or megafauna can provide more information about a particular time period. Animal tracks were also found in White Sands.
Although other archaeological sites in the Americas indicate a similar date range of more than 20,000 years ago – in particular, scientists still doubt whether such materials actually indicate a human presence.
At the same time, the latest study overturns the idea of many archaeologists about what they knew about the time of arrival of our ancestors in the New World.
Earlier we talked about the discovery of the largest 300,000-year-old hand axes in Britain.
Read also: Homo sapiens appeared 100 thousand years earlier – scientists
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