Walk in the footsteps
IT IS certainly rare anywhere in the world for modern man to have the opportunity to intimately glimpse our ancient ancestors’ personal lives from thousands of years ago, as it is on the Formby sands.
The prehistoric human footsteps at the Point allow us to touch where our ancestors ran, walked and played, while the experts are able to calculate their sex and height, and to also study what animal life shared their landscape.
This then helps us to contemplate on their daily lives and routines, and perhaps compare just how different they really were from us in our modern world; the imprints certainly show our ancients to be very much like us – some short, some tall, but all utterly human.
The intriguing footprints provide a fascinating peek into a lost world – a time capsule allowing us to briefly glimpse them before the tides erode them, exposing the fresh new layers underneath.
Every year we view a new insight into our long-past ancestors’ lives and each year they disappear completely, reminding us of a former way of life, as well as the ephemeral nature of time and the fragile world we live on.
Clear, deep footprints in the beach’s muddy clay look freshly made but these are the 4,000 to 10,000-year-old tracks of hunter-gatherers chasing deer, wild boar and mighty aurochs.
Caught in a snap shot of their lives, each print has baked hard under the sun and been covered by silt carried in by the tides until coastal erosion has caused them to reappear.
These provide a tantalising glimpse of another world, of those who have gone long before us – men, women and children, running, walking and playing, giving us a raw connection with our prehistoric past, making many tingle all over, due to the profoundly moving experience.
As well as the human prints, excited experts have also discovered tracks made by other ancient animals here, frozen in time for millennia, and those that feature in Alison Burns’s publication, The Prehistoric Footprints At Formby, include: Aurochs
The first imprint to be discovered in 1985 was a “cattle hoof” – but little was known about it at the time as no research had been done; it turned out to be the extinct auroch, a breed of wild cattle that once roamed across Europe, Asia and North Africa.
The much fabled auroch (remains of which have dated back two million years in India) died out in the early 17th century – the last recorded death being in Poland, in 1627, becoming extinct mainly due to over hunting and disease from domesticated cattle.
This was a ferocious breed of wild ox, very large and a much feared, with large, 2ft 7in (80cm) long, forward-pointing horns – quite a formidable beast!
Standing some 6ft (1.8m) high at the shoulder and some 11ft (3.4m) long, these incredibly heavy and strong creatures, weighing 1,500lbs (700kg), were well-known to be powerful, ill-tempered brutes, very difficult to capture – but a great catch, as they would dwarf even a large modern bull, having been three times the bulk. It would certainly have been a fearsome sight to the early human hunter gatherers on the sands if encountered unexpectedly.
Depicted in prehistoric cave paintings and described in Julius Caesar’s The Gallic War, the auroch was one of the largest herbivores in Europe after the Ice Age.
Aurochs even played a part in the TV series Game Of Thrones, where they were said to have once dwelt in Westeross, with a few still existing in the wild in that mythical kingdom. In the show, aurochs were frequently used as a symbol of size, strength, stubbornness – and stupidity.
Auroch prints are often found in the southern area of Formby beach, especially around Lifeboat Road, Blundell Path and Victoria Road, their prints being square in shape with splayed toes, with the rear imprint showing longredundant bovine toes.
The discovery of the wellpreserved and vast “plinth” tracks of the mighty auroch caused a real stir world-wide after its 7,000-year-old prints were among those discovered at Formby; the beast’s prehistoric tracks were examined by a team of archaeologists from Manchester University, who painstakingly recorded the prints and tracked their location with the Sefton Coast Landscape Partnership overseeing the work.
Red deer
The tracked and traced red deer were much larger than our present moorland-loving “Bambis” and their prints are more visible on the beach than those of any other animal, and found along the whole beach, but especially between Lifeboat Road and Victoria Road. Full red deer skulls and antlers have also been found buried in this mud and elsewhere around the borough and it is highly likely there are many more waiting to be discovered.
Roe deer
Roe deer frequently grazed on the marshes, probably with the red deer, at dawn and dusk; their prints can be seen with the reds’ and look similar but are smaller and rounded at the back, with a division of the hoof at the front, and more pointed.
Wild Boar
The prints of the wild boar are seldom spotted, but have been seen near Blundell Path; they would have eaten shoots of the reeds and enjoyed rooting about in the mud.
Wolf and wild dog
The prints of the wolf and wild dog are so similar that they would probably have looked similar in the mud. They are rarely spotted and are difficult to distinguish from modern-day dogs. As today, dogs were domesticated and would have associated with the humans on the beach.