Ice Age hunter-gatherers left behind footprints, which were recently found in a Utah desert and are providing fresh insight into the first occupants of North America.
More information on how the continent’s first inhabitants lived more than 12,000 years ago, just as the frozen world was beginning to thaw, is revealed by dozens of fossilised prints discovered in dried-up riverbeds in Utah.
If not for an accidental peek out of a moving automobile while researchers Daron Duke and Thomas Urban drove through Hill Air Force Base while conversing about footprints, the fossils may have gone missed.
“We were discussing what they might look like.” Duke said to AFP. “Kind of like that out the window,” he added.”
What the guys had discovered turned out to be 88 different prints left on what is now the Utah Test and Training Range by a mix of adults and youngsters.
“They might seem as simple dirt-colored blotches on the ground or as tiny pop-ups with dirt around or on them. However, they resemble footprints “said Duke.
Following the find, they dug painstakingly for a few days, sometimes with Duke on his tummy, to be sure the object they were inspecting was really as ancient as it looked to be.
In what seemed to be shallow water with a mud sub-layer, Duke discovered the bare feet of persons who had entered the area. “The sand filled it immediately after they took their foot out and has kept it nicely.”
In quest of proof of ancient campfires constructed by the Shoshone, a tribe whose ancestors still reside in the western United States, Duke, of the Nevada-based Far Western Anthropological Research Group, had been in the region.
Because of how different the abundant wetlands would have seemed “from the dry playa it is now,” Duke said he refers to the region as a “lost paradise.”
The Great Salt Lake and Desert West region “serves as a neighbouring example from the past of how suddenly things may change as we confront issues now with the lack of water there,” he added.
Because of Urban’s experience finding evidence of prehistoric people, including the discovery of human footprints in New Mexico’s White Sands National Park that may be up to 23,000 years old, Duke had recruited him from Cornell University.
In addition to a plethora of other discoveries from the region, including as stone tools, tobacco usage evidence, bird bones, and campfire remnants, the new fossils are beginning to fill in the picture of the Shoshone and their ongoing presence in the area beginning 13,000 years ago.
According to Urban, they are the indigenous people that have lived in North America their whole lives and are still there.
Finding the imprints has been a career high point for him personally.
“As soon as I understood I was unearthing a human footprint and could see toes and the object was in pristine shape, I was simply a little in awe of it “said he.
Nothing compares to the thrill of wonder and discovery that an archaeologist may spend their whole lifetime seeking.
Additionally, Urban remarked that it was tremendously satisfying to share the finding with the far-off ancestors of the individuals who produced the prints.
“You realise the same thing is happening—what the link is to something so human and far past, I believe it affects everyone ultimately in some way or another.”
The 5,000-acre archaeological survey and a pilot study on the use of non-invasive archaeological methods, such as the use of a magnetometer and ground penetrating radar, or GPR, are being managed by Anya Kitterman, the cultural resource manager at Hill Air Force Base.
“We discovered so much more than we bargained for,” Kitterman, remarked.