Evidence of humans in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum--Science.org
Not a sexy title. How about this?
A frigging footprint. A goddamned fossilized footprint. And there are thousands of them. The importance of this find is that it antedates the human presence in the Americas by 10,000 years. There are footprints of one person walking a mile and a half. Others show a mother carrying, and setting down briefly, a baby in an environment co-inhabited by giant sloths, Mammoths, and dire wolves.
The New York Times characterizes the footprints as providing "snapshots", but no, no, no, it is not just a snapshot, we are seeing a motion picture with these trails of footprints.
This find is evocative of deep emotion. What images come to the minds of we laypeople when we think of ancient archaeological finds? Tools, pre-historic weapons. "Wow," we say but are thinking "I'll have to take your word for it." There is no having to take archaeologists' words for it with FOOTPRINTS! It is deeply stirring, moving indeed.
Other tracks were made by children. “The children tend to be more energetic,” said Sally Reynolds, a paleontologist at Bournemouth University in England and a co-author of the new study. “They’re a lot more playful, jumping up and down.”
They look like goofballs, archaeologists always do. But their work, this work: "...this is probably the biggest discovery about the peopling of America in a hundred years. I don’t know what gods they prayed to, but this is a dream find.” God's work.
