Human footprints in New Mexico are dated to 21,000–23,000 years ago, millennia before people were thought to have reached the Americas.
Mammoth and giant sloth tracks lie beside them, though the dating is still debated.
The events
- The White Sands footprintsc. 21,000 BC · New Mexico, USA. Dozens of human footprints by an ancient lake in New Mexico were dated, using seeds in the layers, to 21,000–23,000 years ago. If correct, people were in the Americas long before the 13,000–16,000 years once assumed; mammoth and giant sloth tracks lie nearby.
- People reach the Americasc. 12,500 BC · Beringia → Monte Verde, Chile. The ancestors of Native Americans came from Siberia across Beringia while it was still dry land. By about 14,500 years ago people were living at Monte Verde in southern Chile, 15,000 km from the strait. How they moved so fast, along the Pacific coast or through a corridor between ice sheets, is still debated.
More amazing facts
- 22,000 BC · 12,500 BC A boy buried 24,000 years ago near Irkutsk was a genetic relative of both Native Americans and Europeans.
- 18,000 BC · 9000 BC Pots appeared 8,000–9,000 years before farming.
- 17,000 BC · 1940 Lascaux was found thanks to a dog. In 1940, 18-year-old Marcel Ravidat noticed his dog poking into a hole left by an uprooted tree; inside were paintings 17,000 to 22,000 years old.
- 16,000 BC · 1879 Altamira's paintings were found thanks to an eight-year-old girl — and her father was accused of forgery.
- 16,000 BC A puppy 18,000 years old turned up in the Yakutian permafrost with its fur and whiskers.
- 14,000 BC · 2560 BC · 300 BC Japan's Jōmon period lasted some 14,000 years.