Ancient

Roboreader

The Battle Over Human Footprints


If there is one thing that I have seen an awful lot of, it is claims that the world's oldest footprints have been found. This claim pops up every year or so and the time periods vary wildly depending on who is making this statement. How much do these claims differ? As crazy as it sounds, there can be a difference of hundreds of millions of years. The staid scientific community is admitting to finding footprints that are about 345,000 years old. This makes me wonder. Think about this for a second, Neanderthals were absolutely known to have been around for about 600,000 years. Is it possible that they never left any older footprints? Well I guess it is, but you would think that one or two would be found, wouldn't you? So where were these latest footprints found? I bet you think that they were found in Africa or Asia don't you? Tell the truth now. Well you would be wrong, because they were found in Italy. They were found in the hardened volcanic ash of Roccamonfina volcano in southern Italy in 2003. Why is it that you never hear of these things until years later after they are found?

The archaeological community is very careful, careful to the point of driving the rest of us mad. Maybe I am not being fair here. Can you imagine the patience that is needed to be an archaeologist? Have you ever seen them work? Sitting in the dirt with a tiny brush and carefully dusting off microscopic pieces of pottery is not for everyone. The footprints that were found were of three individuals who were believed to have been climbing down the side of the mountain. French scientists have confirmed the age of the footprints. The footprints were said to belong to Homo heidelbergensis. The scientists also state that they can tell that the people that made them were calmly walking not running. Because of this finding it is felt that the footprints were made some time after the volcano had exploded.

Onward to the next claim of finding the world's oldest human footprints. The next set of footprints was found in Africa. These are claimed to be 1.5 million years old and of course they are claimed to be the oldest human footprints found. What else is new? The tracks were found near Ileret in northern Kenya. When you get into the story you find out that they were said to be the SECOND oldest tracks found, but the oldest of anything with a modern anatomy. What they are talking about is that they said that tracks had been found that were 3.75 million years old, but they are not counting them. The 1.5 million year old tracks were those of Homo erectus. Homo erectus was thought to be the first humanoid that walked like we do. Sometimes you have to wonder how scientists figure things out. Homo erectus has left us no samples of its foot bones so you wonder how scientists can make claims that certain foot prints belong to them?

I know you all want to know about those 3.75 million year old tracks, or footprints. Let's take a look at them and see who discovered them and if this was a reliable find. The person that found them was non other than the world famous Mary Leakey and her team. Her honesty is unquestioned in the field of science. She was not alone when the tracks were discovered, she was the leader of a team. Many scientists feel that although she found these old footprints, they only meant that some early hominins could walk on two feet if they wanted to at times and therefore the later discovery of tracks in Africa was more important to the picture of human evolution. The ancient hominins are believed to have also walked like apes on all fours, but there is a disagreement in the scientific community on this point. I guess we will never know the answer to this unless we found one still living and I wouldn't bet anything on that chance.

A footprint was found in Egypt that is being touted as the world's oldest human type footprint. The rock that it was found in is being dated, but Egyptian scientists think that it may be even older than 3 million years. To make this one older than the one above, we might have to disregard the 3.75 million year old print, but that seems to be okay in the oldest footprint game. For some reason everyone wants to be the one to find the world's oldest footprints and yet, so many are being disregarded, because of the ridicule factor. As I have said many times, these archaeologists seem to be making their own history. It sometimes looks too old they just disregard it rather than become the laughing stock of the community. Here is an example of what I am talking about. A book was published in 1987 by Mary Leakey on her Laetoli finds. In the back of the book, R.H. Tuttle reported on a study he did on the footprints and here is what he said, ‘Strictly on the basis of the morphology of the G prints [prints found at a site labeled ‘G’], their makers could be classified as Homo sp. because they are so similar to those of Homo sapiens, but their early date would probably deter many paleoanthropologists from accepting this assignment. I suspect that if the prints were undated, or if they had been given younger dates, most experts would probably accept them as having been made by Homo … . “ In other words it looked like the footprints were made by us and this would mean that we looked the same that far back in time, when we weren't even supposed to exist.

There are those people that believe that man was around when the dinosaurs were and to bolster their claim, they cite the footprints that were found in the limestone beds of the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Texas. There are clear footprints of dinosaurs but also of humans right next to them. If we assume that the river bed turned to stone within a short period after the dinosaurs walked on it, then the footprints made by man had to have been made at the same time. If it took millions of years for the river bed to turn to stone so what? We are talking about hundreds of millions of years ago when the dinosaurs died out. It almost seems impossible that the human footprints are not hundreds of millions of years old. Main stream science will never admit to this because it would change everything that we have been led to believe and that is the problem in a nutshell. Even if it is true, the fact is buried, because it goes against everything. That is why Galileo had to shut up and take back everything he said about what he saw through his telescope. Convention is a powerful thing and while we no longer burn people at the stake for their views, their peers do destroy their lives for unconventional views.

Lastly let's take a look at what many think is an ancient petrified shoe print. The print was found in Triassic rock near Fisher Canyon, Nevada around 1917. The print would knock the world on its scientific ear if accepted. It certainly does look like a shoe and its age is suggested to be somewhere around 200 million years. While it has the outline of a shoe, scientists were busily trying to make it into something else. They said it was merely an ironstone concretion. This is sort of a oval formation in the rock. They won't even entertain the idea that maybe it could be a shoe print. So this is where we stand. Every scientist wants to claim to have discovered the oldest human footprint as long as they are not too old.