It has been some time since my last post, work and health issues have kept me busy with other less interesting matters, but hopefully I will find more time to keep on posting.
The paper published in Science magazine yesterday is really surprising (not for me, but for the orthodox viewpoint that is against an early date for the peopling of America).
The paper (Evidence of humans in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum by Matthew Bennet et al., 24 Sep 2021, Science Vol 373, Issue 6562 pp. 1528-1531 DOI: 10.1126/science.abg7586) reports dating ancient footprints from a New Mexico lake in White Sands National Park (WHSA).
The introduction and abstract tell us the following:
"Early footsteps in the Americas
Despite a plethora of archaeological research over the past century, the timing of human migration into the Americas is still far from resolved. In a study of exposed outcrops of Lake Otero in White Sands National Park in New Mexico, Bennett et al. reveal numerous human footprints dating to about 23,000 to 21,000 years ago. These finds indicate the presence of humans in North America for approximately two millennia during the Last Glacial Maximum south of the migratory barrier created by the ice sheets to the north. This timing coincided with a Northern Hemispheric abrupt warming event, Dansgaard-Oeschger event 2, which drew down lake levels and allowed humans and megafauna to walk on newly exposed surfaces, creating tracks that became preserved in the geologic record. —AMS
Abstract
Archaeologists and researchers in allied fields have long sought to understand human colonization of North America. Questions remain about when and how people migrated, where they originated, and how their arrival affected the established fauna and landscape. Here, we present evidence from excavated surfaces in White Sands National Park (New Mexico, United States), where multiple in situ human footprints are stratigraphically constrained and bracketed by seed layers that yield calibrated radiocarbon ages between ~23 and 21 thousand years ago. These findings confirm the presence of humans in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum, adding evidence to the antiquity of human colonization of the Americas and providing a temporal range extension for the coexistence of early inhabitants and Pleistocene megafauna."
The prints were dated using seeds of an aquatic plant found in the lake's sediment. This can't be argued away easily. These are human prints (and the paper adds that "The WHSA tracks, similar to the fossil tracks from Namibia, are flatter-footed than the modern samples, similar to what is commonly reported for habitually unshod individuals ... The WHSA footprints also have longer toe pads that we suggest are associated with slippage of the foot during locomotion."
It also explains why megafauna was becoming extinct even before humans arrived (humans arrived earlier than thought, and provoked these extinctions): "The overlap of humans and megafauna for at least two millennia during this time suggests that if people were hunting megafauna the practices were sustainable, at least initially. This also raises the possibility of a human role in poorly understood megafauna extinctions previously thought to predate their arrival and makes “early” sites in the Americas appear more plausible".
Photo of the prints, from the paper:
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2021 by Austin Whittall ©
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