The Oldest American?
Footprints from the Past

                     

Right human footprint, showing toe impressions and typical figure of eight shape	Human left footprint showing toe impressions and slight heel impression. Modern size 43 for scale

 

 

The discovery of 40,000 years old human footprints in Central Mexico challenges accepted theories on when and how humans first colonised the Americas.

 

The timing, route and origin of the first colonisation of the Americas remains one of the most contentious topics in human evolution. Experts from many disciplines are searching for the answers to three seemingly straightforward questions:

• From where did the first people come?

• How did they enter the Americas?

• When did they arrive?

 

Until recently archaeologists thought they had the answers to these questions. Evidence suggested that the Americas had been colonised towards the end of the Pleistocene period by hunter-gatherers migrating from Siberia into Alaska across the Bering Land Bridge, an exposed continental shelf, when sea levels were lower. This is known as the Clovis-First Model.

 

According to this model the earliest occupation of the Americas began 11,500 years ago.

 

The discovery of fossilised human footprints in the Valsequillo Basin, Central Mexico challenges this accepted viewpoint and provides new evidence that humans settled in the Americas as early as 40,000 years ago.

 

 

Location of Mexico and Mexico City

Location of the modern Valsequillo reservoir and Cerro Toluquilla south-east of Puebla.

Toluquilla quarry and the upper surface of the Xalnene Ash where the footprints are preserved.

 

The footprints were discovered in the summer of 2003, on the floor of an abandoned quarry by Dr Silvia Gonzalez, Professor David Huddart (Liverpool John Moores University) and Professor Matthew Bennett (Bournemouth University). At the time of the discovery the team were working on dating and mapping the geology of the Valsequillo Basin, Puebla, Mexico.

 

Dr Gonzalez is one of a growing number of scientists who believes that the first Americans may have arrived by water rather than on foot, island hopping along the Pacific coast. Click here to find out more about her research on the Pacific Coastal Migration Route.

 

The footprints research was carried out as part of a wider project funded by NERC through the EFCHED programme, entitled ‘Human dispersals and environmental controls during the Late Pleistocene / Early Holocene in Mexico: Implications for the Peopling of the Americas’. The research is also supported by INAH (Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia) in Mexico.

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