Ancient human footprints found at White Sands in New Mexico have gained fresh support from a new scientific study. Published inScience Advances, the research backs up earlier findings that placed people at the site between 23,000 and 21,000 years ago, a claim that has sparked years of debate among archaeologists.
The new study checks the original results using a different material, ancient mud, and comes up with nearly the same dates, giving researchers more confidence that the timeline holds up.
Today, White Sands is famous for its rolling gypsum dunes, but the landscape looked very different thousands of years ago. According to the University of Arizona, the area was once dotted with lakes and streams before drying out and becoming buried beneath layers of gypsum sand. That’s where the footprints survived for millennia.
Getting access to the site has never been easy. Part of the area is protected as a national park, while the neighboring land is used as the White Sands Missile Range. Archaeologist and geologist Vance Holliday first worked there in 2012, studying the geology of the ancient lake beds. At the time, he had no idea that a major archaeological discovery was sitting only about 100 yards away.
A Fresh Test Of The Original Dating
The footprints were excavated in 2019 by researchers from Bournemouth University and the U.S. National Park Service, with the first study published two years later. That paper concluded the tracks were left between 23,000 and 21,000 years ago, much earlier than many archaeologists had expected.
Some researchers questioned those results because they were based on radiocarbon dating of ancient seeds and pollen found in the sediments. The latest study takes a different route.
As reported by Science Advances, the team dated organic material preserved in ancient mud from the same geological layers. The samples came back at 20,700 to 22,400 years old, closely matching the earlier age estimates.
The imprints have now been dated using three different materials, seeds, pollen and mud, tested in three separate laboratories. Across two independent research groups, the site has produced 55 consistent radiocarbon dates.
“It’s a remarkably consistent record,” Vance Holliday said. He added that, ” it would be serendipity in the extreme to have all these dates giving you a consistent picture that’s in error.”
The Footprints That Keep Challenging Old Ideas
If the White Sands dates are correct, people were walking through the area about 10,000 years before the culture linked to the famous Clovis site in New Mexico, which had long been considered the earliest known evidence of humans in North America.
That is why the discovery continues to draw so much attention. Holliday explained in a press release published by the University of Arizona that he has spent nearly 50 years studying the peopling of the Americas, adding that the growing number of matching dates only strengthens the original findings.
The new paper was designed to answer one of the biggest criticisms of the 2021 study by testing a completely different type of material to date the White Sands footprints. Rather than replacing the earlier research, it adds another independent line of evidence supporting the footprints’ proposed age.
One Mystery Is Still Unsolved
The dating may be getting stronger, but one question remains. If people were really at White Sands that early, why haven’t archaeologists found tools or campsites nearby?
Holliday said the new research doesn’t answer that question. He noted that some of thepreserved footprints represent only a few seconds of walking. In that situation, he said, there is no reason to expect hunter-gatherers to leave valuable tools behind.
“These people live by their artifacts, and they were far away from where they can get replacement material. They’re not just randomly dropping artifacts,” he stated. “It’s not logical to me that you’re going to see a debris field.”
The landscape itself has also changed dramatically over thousands of years. As noted in the University of Arizona’s statement, wind erosion removed part of the ancient surface, while the rest remains buried beneath thick gypsum deposits.
