Oldest Footprints In North America is Much Earlier than thought

North and South America were the last continents to be settled by humans, but when that started is a topic that has divided archaeologists. The common view is that people arrived in North America from Asia via Beringia, a land bridge that once connected the two continents, at the end of the Ice Age around 13,000 to 16,000 years ago. Some contested discoveries have suggested humans might have been in North America earlier. A study was discovered in journal science.

Researchers studying fossilized human Footprints in New Mexico say they have the first unequivocal evidence that humans were in North America at least 23,000 years ago. Matthew Bennett, a professor and specialist in ancient Footprints at Bournemouth University and author of a study on the new findings published in the journal Science on Thursday said that the peopling of the Americas is one of those things that has been for many years very contentious and a lot of archaeologists hold views with almost religious zeal.

He said that one of the problems is that there is very little data. Bennett and his colleagues dated 61 Footprints by radiocarbon dating layers of aquatic plant seeds that had been preserved above and below them. The researchers found that the prints, which were discovered in the Tularosa Basin in White Sands National Park, were made 21,000 to 23,000 years ago. The timing and location of the prints in southwestern North America suggests that humans must have been on the continent much earlier than previously thought