Footprints from 120k years ago trace journey out of Africa
WASHINGTON: Around 120,000 years ago in what is now northern Saudi Arabia, a small band of Homo sapiens stopped to drink and forage at a shallow lake that was also frequented by camels, buffalo, and elephants bigger than any species seen today.
The people did not stay long, using the watering hole as a waypoint on a longer journey. This detailed scene was reconstructed by researchers in a new study published in Science
Advances on Wednesday, following the discovery of ancient human and animal footprints in the Nefud desert that shed new light on the routes our ancient ancestors took as they spread out of Africa.
The paper’s first author Mathew Stewart, of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Germany, told AFP the footprints were discovered during his PHD field work in 2017 following the erosion of overlying sediments at an ancient lake dubbed “Alathar” (meaning “the trace” in Arabic).
The prints were dated using a technique called “optical stimulated luminescence blasting light at quartz grains” and measuring the amount of energy emitted from them.
In total, seven out of the hundreds of prints discovered were confidently identified as hominin, including four that, given their similar orientation, distances from one another and differences in size, were interpreted as two or three individuals travelling together.
The researchers argue these belonged to anatomically modern humans, as opposed to Neanderthals.