Paleo-human footprints dotting White Sands National Park in New Mexico are 23,000 to 21,000 years old, making them the oldest known fossilized trackways left by people in North America, a new study finds. However, not everyone agrees with the results.
Humans got to America 7,000 years earlier than thought, new research confirms
This is all over the news lately. If confirmed it will be a big deal.
For the last two decades, an array of evidence from DNA, archaeology, and fossils has given rise to new ways of looking at the human past. Scientists today understand that Neandertals are among the ancestors of today’s people, that the vast majority of everyone’s genetic heritage comes from Africa, and that those ancestors were never a small population living in any single place. They formed a reticulated tree of ancient lineages going back more than six hundred thousand years.
Interaction and mixture: big picture and small
This post by John Hawks is another reminder that the past is far more complex than the simple stories we have heard before now.