At least 88 human footprints believed to be more than 12,000 years old have been discovered on the grounds of a military base in the US state of Utah. If this discovery is confirmed, it will be only the second discovery of such footprints in the United States. The footprints were recently discovered by archaeologists doing research at the Utah Test and Training Site in Utah’s Western Desert.
Although it is now a barren plain in desert terrain, this area is thought to have once been an oasis, often used as a resting place by America’s first settlers. The team also uncovered evidence of an open fire pit dating back some 12,300 years, found alongside burnt bird bones, charcoal, projectile points and stone tools during fieldwork. All of these stand out as sure signs of human activity. However, we can say that the most important part of this work is undoubtedly the dozens of small footprints found buried in the ground.
Far West Anthropological Research Group Principal Investigator Dr. “Based on excavations of various fingerprints, we found evidence that adults with children aged approximately 5 to 12 years left bare footprints,” Daron Duke said in a statement.
“People look like they’re walking in shallow water, quickly filling up the sand tracks after their steps – just like you see on a beach – but the layer of mud under the sand keeps the tracks intact after the sand fills up,” Duke continued.
The story of how and when people came to America is still an important topic of discussion. For a long time it was assumed that the earliest inhabitants of the Americas were a group known as the “Clovis culture” that settled on the continent about 15,000 to 13,000 years ago. More recent discoveries have pushed this time period back, and estimates of the arrival of the first inhabitants ranged from 25,000 years ago to 37,000 years ago.
“Our long-term study of the geochronology of this region shows that these tracks are probably more than 12,000 years old,” says Duke.
The newly discovered footprints in Utah don’t change much what we know about America’s first inhabitants, but they’re still pretty impressive given their age and location. The only other Pleistocene-age human footprints found in the United States were recently unearthed at White Sands National Park in New Mexico. These footprints, which seem to have been imprinted on them by children and young people, date back to 21,000 and 23,000 years.
Looking back at the Utah discovery, archaeologists now want to work with indigenous groups to study the footprints and learn more about the significance of the discovery.
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