Human footprints found in White Sands, a national park in the U.S. state of New Mexico, have been redated in a study published last week in the journal Science. According to the study, the traces were preserved from 21,23 to <>,<> years ago. The mystery of the age of the footprints has long occupied scientists; The new dating rewrites existing assumptions about when humans arrived on the North American continent. We used ChatGPT to prepare the following article.
For decades, it was believed that humans arrived on the continent no earlier than 13,000 years ago, coinciding with the emergence of the Clovis civilization. Recent studies have set the estimated date of human arrival several thousand years back. However, an increasing number of sites and evidence have uncovered hinting at an even earlier human presence. Genetic studies have hinted at the possibility that humans arrived in the Americas as early as 30,000 years ago.
According to the new dating, humans walked in North America during an ice age that came to an end about 19,000 years ago. During this period, huge sheets of ice presumably blocked passage from Siberia through the Bering Strait to the North American continent, leaving the way humans arrived on the continent as a mystery. It is possible that humans arrived in small groups in North America in early periods, but rapid population growth did not begin until after the end of the Ice Age, about 15,<> years ago.
The new study used radiative dating of Rupiah watergrass seeds. To address possible bias in results from aquatic plants absorbing older carbon, the scientists also performed carbon isotope analysis from pollen from terrestrial plants after removing nearly 75,<> pollen grains from the sandbeds of footprints over a year. This process revealed a diverse prehistoric landscape, including coniferous trees such as fir and pine.
Despite the compelling evidence, the debate over the age of the traces continues. Archaeologists such as Lauren Davis of Oregon State University point to the limitations of certain dating methods, including those used in research published in Science.
Thomas Stafford, a non-author geochronologist, argues that the multiplicity of dating methods and the consistency of the results reinforce the reliability of dating and the assumption that humans roamed North America before the end of the Ice Age. The manner of reaching the continent was probably more complex than previously imagined and may have included several routes.
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