00:03just a couple of years ago these footprints were found in white sands a desert in new mexico they
00:08are obviously human and make but even when they were discovered in 2021 experts knew they were
00:13special as they were thought to be the oldest signs of humans in north america now researchers
00:18have confirmed their age finding that they are indeed the oldest signals of humanity on the
00:23continent and that they are 21 500 years old that means they were here during the last glacial
00:29maximum a period during the pleistocene epoch during that time sea levels were a whopping 400
00:34feet lower than today and 25 of all land on earth was covered in glaciers researchers initially
00:40confirmed the age of the footprints by radiocarbon dating seeds that were embedded in the prince
00:44then going back and doing the same with pollen that was discovered on the same sedimentary levels
00:49which corroborated those numbers they went through exhaustive measures to date the prince as many
00:53people couldn't believe that humans were in north america that early with their researchers writing
00:58about their findings quote the immediate reaction in some circles of the archaeological community was
01:03that the accuracy of our dating was insufficient to make the extraordinary claim that humans were
01:07present in north america during the last glacial maximum
Comments