October 11, 2016
by Brett Smith
On the
shoreline of Tanzania’s Lake Natron, scientists have recognized and cataloged a
particularly rare find: a large set of well-preserved human footprints left
behind between 5,000 and 19,000 years ago.
Scientists
found more than 400 footprints in an area bigger than a tennis court, covering
the dark gray mudflat of Engare Sero. No other location in Africa has as many
ancient human footprints-making it a remarkable find for researchers trying to
understand the earliest days of modern humans.
A few
of the tracks appear to show people jogging through the mud, running a
12-minute-mile pace or faster. Other prints indicate a person with a somewhat
strange, potentially broken big toe. Even more tracks show that about a dozen
people, mainly women and children, journeyed across the mudflat together,
traveling the southwest for an unknown destination. The mud recorded it
all-including the muddy drops that fell from their feet with each and every
step.
“The
first time we went out there, I remember getting out of the vehicle, and I
teared up a little bit,” Cynthia Liutkus-Pierce, an Appalachian State University
geologist, told National Geographic. “Human origins is a huge interest of
mine: where we came from, and why we are who we are. It was definitely
emotional to see our own history in this.”
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