Ancient footsteps lead scientists to believe New World populated 40,000 years ago

  LONDON -- Archeologists have discovered evidence that humans inhabited the Americas
  25,000 years earlier than had been believed.The evidence -- 269 human footprints
  preserved in ancient volcanic ash -- was discovered by Mexican and British
  archeologists near the town of Puebla, 120 kilometres southeast of Mexico City.

  It is one of the most important archeological finds of recent decades. The discovery,
  made public yesterday, indicates that humans colonized the New World at least 40,000
  years ago. The find was made by archeologists Sylvia Gonzalez and Dave Huddart of
  Liverpool John Moores University and Matthew Bennett of Bournemouth University. 

  "The discovery of the footprints in Mexico is . . . important because it shows that
  humanity's spread across the world was much faster than previously thought. What's more,
  this increased speed of migration shows that our ancestors adapted to new environments
  much quicker and more easily than we had imagined," Dr. Gonzalez said.

  "The new discovery also gives additional support to the idea that the very early first
  Americans may well have been of Australoid type closely related to the Australian Aborigines.
  They probably originated from eastern and southeastern Asia."

  At present, the earliest estimate of when there was a human presence in the extreme east
  of Asia (eastern Siberia) is 35,000 years ago, but even that puts humans 2,000 kilometres
  west of where Asia used to connect with North America, at what is now the Bering Strait.

  When combined with existing knowledge on prehistoric climate, the new discovery suggests
  that humans may have entered the Americas during a slightly less cold phase within the
  ice age that occurred about 50,000 years ago. They would either have walked over the
  ice-bound Bering Strait or island-hopped in primitive boats from east Asia to Alaska via
  the Kuril and Aleutian chains of islands, hundreds of kilometres south. 

  That would mean that migration into the Americas occurred at about the same time as the
  normally accepted date of the early aboriginal colonization of Australia. It may well be,
  some archeologists now believe, that the first Americans were Australoid peoples closely
  related to the early Aborigines. Given that the new evidence proves they were there about
  40,000 years ago, it is also now for the first time conceivable that humans entered the
  Americas even earlier, perhaps during a much warmer spell (a true interglacial period)
  about 70,000 years ago.

  The Mexican footprints were made by at least four to six individuals (probably two adults
  and between two and four children) in at least three episodes, several weeks or even months
  apart. In all episodes, the humans were walking barefoot along the shoreline of a large
  lake, now a reservoir called Lake Valsequillo.

  Each episode of footprints was preserved by ash from eruptions of a nearby volcano.
  The ash layer is two to four metres thick, and the footprints were found in the top 20
  centimetres, under two to three metres of lake sediments, laid down during an expansion
  of the lake. The volcanic ash in which the prints are preserved has been dated by two
  different techniques to between 38,000 and 39,000 years ago.

  Until now, the earliest definite archeological dates for a human presence in the Americas
  was about 15,000 years ago in various parts of North and South America. Dozens of the
  footprints have been recorded digitally and six casts have been made by scientists at
  Bournemouth University. The casts went on display yesterday at London's Royal Society,
  one of the world's oldest independent scientific institutions. 

  By DAVID KEYS
  Tuesday, July 5, 2005 Page A10
  Special to The Globe and Mail

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050705/FOOTPRINT05/TPInternational/Americas

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