850,000-year-old footprints found on English beach

[deminks]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/09/850000-year-old-footprints-found-on-english-beach/

The oldest human footprints ever found outside Africa, dated at between 850,000 and 950,000 years old, have been discovered on the storm-lashed beach at Happisburgh in Norfolk, one of the fastest eroding stretches of the British coast. Within a fortnight the sea tides that exposed the prints last May destroyed them, leaving only casts and 3D images made through photogrammetry – by stitching together hundreds of photographs – as evidence that a little group from a long-extinct early human species had passed that way.

They walked through a startlingly different landscape from today’s, along the estuary of what may have been the original course of the Thames, through a river valley grazed by mammoths, hippos and rhinoceros. The pattern of the prints suggests at least five individuals heading southward, pausing and pottering about to gather plants or shellfish along the bank. They included several children. The best preserved prints, clearly showing heel, arch and four toes – one may not have left a clear impression – is of a man with a foot equivalent to a modern size 8 shoe, suggesting an individual about 5ft 7ins (1.7 metres ) tall.

“This is an extraordinarily rare discovery,” said Nick Ashton, a scientist at the British Museum where the find was announced. “The Happisburgh site continues to rewrite our understanding of the early human occupation of Britain and indeed of Europe.”
Although far older footprints have been found in Africa, the prints are more than twice the age of the previous oldest in Europe, from southern Italy and dated to around 345,000 years.

(end snip)

I post without comment.

[treestar]

1. Intriguing

The first thing I would think is how amazing that would be they were persevered and are recoverable.

[Enthusiast]

34. Sand is transformed into sandstone over time, preserving the footprints.

After the prints are made, new sand washes into them making a distinct layer which is subsequently eroded away exposing the preserved prints. Sometimes a reverse cast is formed. Thousands of dinosaur foot prints have been found preserved around the world the same way.

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/thousands-dinosaur-tracks-found-along-alaskas-yukon-river-f8C11251756

[treestar]

52. That is totally cool!

[Enthusiast]

53. It is totally cool!

They have even found footprints of tiny animals.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Wait, the world is *only* 6000 years old

Thanks by the way

[egduj]

4. That's one theory.

And another theory is that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old and that a few specks of gas and dirt somehow transformed into reproducible life, although it has never been observed or replicated by man after over a century of attempts.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. Aggregation has been reproduced in zero G

And we are finding the building blocks of life like everywhere.

Also learn the difference between belief (6000 years) and the scientific method, the latter one.

Yes, I was making fun of belief and the the Ham types.

[notadmblnd]

9. I take it your not into science?

But guess what? A few specks of gas and dirt can be reproduced and can be observed by humans. And if you had one iota of curiosity you too could observe reproducible life formnothing more than gas and dirt.

One of the most common areas that it can observed- is in ones own bathroom. You know that orange-ish or pink colored stuff that grows on your shower wall or tub? That's bacteria. Or how about the black stuff in the corner of your shower when you move your bottle of shampoo? That's known as mold or mildew. It is growing and reproducing. And if you don't kill it with a bleach product, it will continue growing and reproducing from nothing more than the dirt and moisture in your shower.

[factsarenotfair]

11. Even Pat Robertson was making fun of Ken Ham's ideas.

PAT ROBERTSON.

[Shadowflash]

17. Yeah.

You know you're a crackpot when the guy saying that 'homosexuals and feminists are causing hurricanes and natural disasters' thinks YOUR science is bad.

[Wounded Bear]

12. "6000 years" is not a theory...

at least in a scientific sense.

I'm not convinced it's even a decent hypothesis.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

19. ...

[JDPriestly]

22. never replicated except in preparing vaccines maybe

We get new forms of viruses because the viruses evolve in real time within a relatively short period of time.

The continuing evolution of H5N1 viruses and the clusters of human infections in Indonesia and Turkey raise important questions. First, can the source of H5N1 be eliminated? And second, is the increasing number of clusters of human infection an indicator of evolution toward consistent human-to-human transmission?

http://journal.9med.net/qikan/article.php?id=224499

That is just one example of evolution that is occurring today. Because viruses evolve in a relatively short time period it is easy to understand this.

I assume your post is intended to be humorous because even I with my partly Southern education and no science to speak of can understand this.

Here is a book that explains some of the physical proof for the "theory" that humans evolved from animals: Your Inner Fish.

Our ears link us to fish.

[sulphurdunn]

26. The 4.5 billion year theory

is the only theory. The other is religious dogma attempting to masquerade as scientific theory. The reproducible life thing most likely requires not just dirt and gas but liquid water. Of course, we may do it with silicon chips first. Absence of proof is not proof of absence, as anyone who's failed for many centuries to prove the existence of God should know.

[laundry_queen]

29. Guess which theory has actual evidence behind it?

Unless you've twisted your mind to think that's all manufactured by the devil or something.

[Enthusiast]

32. The notion of a young earth doesn't even rise to the level of hypothesis, let alone theory.

Learn a bit of science.

[kestrel91316]

36. Just proves that measly little humans are not as powerful as the totality

of the natural world over 4.5 billion years.

It requires a gargantuan ego to think that man could EVER create life on his own.

[Vashta Nerada]

37. Theories are supported by evidence. Creationism is supported by no evidence.

Therefore, Creationism is not a theory. It's a hypothesis, at best.

[snooper2]

58. At least respond to my reply (ignore the others :) )

You know what I think...


The Earth really is over 4.5 billion years old, but it was done by another god called Cryone who made a really evil planet. This existed for billions and billions of years until Jesus made his way to our Solar System, kicked his ass, and basically (wiped the slate clean) 6000 years ago. The one big part left out of the bible is all the other humanoid planetary systems that Jesus has created since the dawn of God!

[Warren DeMontague]

59. You're kidding, right?

Evolution is a fact. The 4.5 Billion year age and history of the Earth, is a FACT.

To claim that they are "just theories" equivalent to any unsubstantiated bullshit some nimrod can make up, like "I have a Theory that if i stick a trumpet in my pants and say a magic word, i can play zipadee-doodah out my ass", is nothing less than a crime against logic, critical thought and evidence-based reasoning.

[spin]

20. You can blame that calulation on Archbishop James Ussher not on the Bible. ...

James Ussher (sometimes spelled Usher, 4 January 1581 – 21 March 1656) was Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland between 1625 and 1656. He was a prolific scholar, who most famously published a chronology that purported to establish the time and date of the creation as the night preceding Sunday, 23 October 4004 BC, according to the proleptic Julian calendar.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ussher

I'm not a member of any organized religion but I do enjoy studying the subject. The "Old Testament" which contains the stories of creation and much of the genealogy that Archbishop used for his calculation is actually quite similar to the Jewish Bible or Tanakh.

Therefore when reading the Old Testament in the Christian Bible I find it useful to also read a good commentary by a Jewish scholar.

When doing some research on the seven days of creation I ran across a calculation of the age of the universe by a Jewish scholar who studied the esoteric teachings of the Jewish Kabbalah.

Isaac ben Samuel of Acre

Isaac ben Samuel of Acre (fl. 13th–14th century) (Hebrew: יצחק בן שמואל דמן עכו, Yitzhak ben Shmuel d'min Akko) was a Jewish kabbalist who fled to Spain.[1]
According to Abraham Azulai,[2] Isaac ben Samuel was a pupil of Nahmanides.

***snip***

Theory of age of the Universe

Isaac states that the universe is actually 15,340,500,000 years old.[5] Isaac arrived at this conclusion by distinguishing between earthly "solar years" and "divine years," based on a verse from Psalms, which states that "A thousand years in Your sight are but as yesterday" (Psalm 90:4). If each day of a divine year is equal to a thousand earthly "solar years," then a divine year would be 365,250 years long. Isaac then makes some other calculations based on the Talmud and the Biblical sabbatical year, and arrives at the said number. The scientific estimation places the occurrence of the Big Bang at 13.798 ± 0.037 billion years ago.[6]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-adam-jacobs/the-jewish-view-of-creati_b_800257.html

Sefer HaTemunah

***snip***

Some say[who?] that the Sabbatical cycles in Sefer HaTemunah can be used as a basis for calculating the age of the universe. While Sefer HaTemunah sees the world as existing in the second cycle, others[8] say it is in the seventh cycle.[1] If so, Adam was created when the universe was 42,000 years old, and six worlds were created and destroyed before the creation of Adam.[1] This thesis was laid out by Rabbi Isaac ben Samuel of Acre, a 13th-century Kabbalist, who said that when calculating the age of the universe, one must use divine years rather than physical years.

“ I, the insignificant Yitzchak of Akko, have seen fit to write a great mystery that should be kept very well hidden. One of God's days is a thousand years, as it says, "For a thousand years are in Your eyes as a fleeting yesterday." Since one of our years is 365 ¼ days, a year on High is 365,250 our years.[9] ”

By interpreting the texts of Sefer HaTemunah and the Midrash, Isaac ben Samuel of Acre calculated the age of the universe to be 15,340,500,000 years old.[1][10] His reasoning was as follows: as the Midrash states, "A thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday" (Psalm 90:4); a physical year contains 365 ¼ days, which, if multiplied by 1000 would give the length of a divine year as 365,250 physical years; if we are living in the last, 7th Sabbatical cycle, that would mean that the creation as it described in the Bible happened 42,000 divine years ago; to convert this figure to physical years it should be multiplied by 365,250; this gives the result 15,340,500,000 years.[1]

In 1993, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan wrote that the Big Bang occurred "approximately 15 billion years ago", calling this "the same conclusion" as the 13th century kabbalists.[1] According to a 2013 estimate by ESA's Planck project, the age of the universe is 13.798 ± 0.037 billion years.[11] Kaplan also relates to Sefer HaTemunah the idea that Torah teachings are compatible with other areas of modern science. According to Kaplan, Orthodox Jews often challenge the findings of paleontology and geology as conflicting with Torah concepts. But in an "extremely controversial" essay, Israel Lipschitz drew on the writings of Abraham ibn Ezra, Nahmanides, and Bahya ibn Paquda to argue the opposite conclusion: "See how the teachings of our Torah have been vindicated by modern discoveries." Lipschitz wrote that fossils of mammoths and dinosaurs represent previous Sabbatical cycles in which humans and other beings lived in universes before Adam, and that the Himalayas were formed in a great upheaval, one of the upheavals mentioned in Sefer HaTemunah.[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sefer_HaTemunah

Now I realize that all this proves little except that the Bible says a lot of things that can be interpreted or misinterpreted in many different ways.

[nadinbrzezinski]

23. Well, when Usher came up with it

It was a decent explanation. He came up with it at the cusp of a modern scientific revolution, he was just on the wrong side of it. When Ken Ham keeps peddling it, with all the evidence we have that the universe is a tad older, let alone the planet, it really is Sagan's prediction of warlocks and witches. Usher's theory (if we deign to call it that way) should be confined to religious history, with the much older question of how many angels fit on the head of a pin?

By the way, we are close to 1000 exo planets. I guess like Dino bones, this is Satan playing games with us.

[spin]

27. I not only study religion but I also enjoy watching Ancient Aliens on the "History" channel. ...

I feel there might be some possibility to the theory that long ago in our past, intelligent aliens visited our planet and played with the DNA of our ancestors to create a more intelligent ape. We are verging on developing technology at that level today.

110 years ago the Wright Brothers managed to fly their Wright Flyer for 120 feet. Today we have gone to the moon and are considering a voyage to Mars. We also have a manned space station in orbit. Imagine how advanced we will be in 100, 500 or 1000 years as well as what we will accomplish and where we will have journeyed.

Of course that assumes that we will not have managed to destroy our civilization.

[nadinbrzezinski]

28. I continue to play with a variation of that in fiction

Latest thing, we are already seeing the early edges of it, human diversification into different species.

The fact that some populations can't have milk and others do well with it, very early in that process

[spin]

57. That's an intriguing idea. (n/t)

[shenmue]

3. That's one heck of a commute

Ba-dum-bump, tish.

[freshwest]

5. Love it.

[Fawke Em]

10. That's not them, though.

I don't know why they used a picture of fresh prints in sand.

Here is the real picture:

[freshwest]

15. Thanks, thought it looked wrong for fossilized prints. Is there another link? TIA.

[Fawke Em]

55. I just Googled it, but most of the sites

that have the real pictures are British news sites.

[freshwest]

64. Wonder why Raw Story went with the generic image. Copyright? IDK. Thanks. n/t

[cthulu2016]

6. That date may well be revised

It is possible, but I think that is so at odds with the findings of molecular biology, as well as with all other archeology, that it is an extraordinary date for the locale, and not one that will be accepted without intense scrutiny.

[Enthusiast]

39. How so? We know human ancestors were widespread by then.

The footprints wouldn't have been made by modern humans and they're too old even for Neanderthal.

http://www.sci-news.com/othersciences/anthropology/science-dmanisi-human-skull-georgia-01474.html

[former9thward]

8. How would footprints be preserved for 850k years?

They weren't walking in lava.

[Fumesucker]

14. The same way dinosaur footprints are preserved for tens of millions of years

It's a rare phenomenon that takes just the right conditions when the footprints are made.

[JDPriestly]

24. And under the ocean no less. Still, evolution is real, but the story in the OP is pretty weird.

Are there photos, photos that aren't photoshopped?

[Enthusiast]

35. Better yet, they were walking in wet sand or mud.............nt

[former9thward]

40. Go walking in wet sand or mud.

And see how long the footprints last.

[Enthusiast]

42. Not when additional layers are washed over the top of them, preserving them.

It's standard paleontology. You don't have to believe it.

[former9thward]

43. I just said, do it, see if the experiment works.

Isn't that what science is all about?

[Enthusiast]

45. How many centuries would we have to wait for the sand to become solidified

into sand stone or mud stone, as the case may be? Sometime experiments are not practical.

[former9thward]

47. Then its not science.

It is total speculation if conditions can be replicated. Those footprints of yours will be gone in a week at the most. No need to wait centuries.

[Enthusiast]

50. Funny that scientists accept

my explanation for fossil track ways found all over the earth. Geologists know how the various sedimentary rocks are formed.

[former9thward]

51. Sedimentary rocks are not footprints in the sand.

Don't try and move the goalposts.

[Enthusiast]

54. So what are you disagreeing with, exactly?

You don't "believe" in fossil footprints? You don't believe in these particular fossil footprints? You don't like my explanation for how they are formed? You believe in a young earth and are angry with the discussion? You don't like the idea of footprints from human ancestors because you don't believe in evolution at all? You are just trying to irritate me somehow?

[former9thward]

65. Ohh, here come the strawmen!

You don't believe in evolution!!! Look if you are irritated by my posts the administrators have given you a tool to deal with that. It is called ignore.

I am very skeptical that some "footprints" could survive for 850k years under the ocean and then they are gone in one storm. It sounds like junk science to me.

[Enthusiast]

69. Strawman? Hardly. I'm trying to understand you. Like I said in another post,

Last edited Sun Feb 9, 2014, 11:38 PM - Edit history (1)

the prints were likely buried under additional sedimentary layers for many thousands of years. This would protect the fossils. This could be proven on site as some areas might have a more complete sequence of remaining sedimentary layers to compare with. That is why is was so disturbing that the prints were degraded due to a powerful surf. Fossils are always far more valuable found in situ.

Water filled sauropod tracks that lasted 100 million years or so.

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[snooper2]

62. Could you change the word sand to mud/clay

and then, Please Continue!

[former9thward]

66. Fine, find some mud, walk in it and see how long the footprints last.

[snooper2]

67. K, it's been two minutes-

how often should I check,

and, is okay if I throw a little lava over it or should I just leave them alone?

[former9thward]

68. Do whatever you think you should do to prove footprints last 850k years under the ocean.

It seems they don't teach the Scientific Method to the kids anymore.

[snooper2]

70. Do you have a canal I can borrow?

[former9thward]

72. The picture with the link showed footprints which were made 5 minutes before.

Telling. Fake picture = Fake science.

[packman]

13. I found it amazing

that the prints were made by a species of humans that became extinct in the family tree of evolution AND there was such a short time frame from the discovery of the prints to when they were destroyed by nature. Talk about timing, serendependy, luck and just WOWNESS. Footprints in the sand of time indeed.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

16. That is the only thing I took from this story...

...they survive for close to 1,000,000 years then are destroyed in one storm right after they were "discovered." A million years of weather couldn't do what one storm did?

Fishy

[KatyMan]

30. the article mentioned beach erosion

So they've likely been under water and silt for a lot of those million years,

[former9thward]

46. Like water and silt don't erode things.

Especially when you add in tides, currents and water pressure.

[Enthusiast]

41. Originally the tracks were probably covered by many layers of sedimentary rock

that was gradually eroded until that particular layer was exposed. Some layers are comprised of hard, erosion resistant material. This erosion process is happening all over the earth. You can actually observe this yourself if you wish. This is how we find fossils, they are eroded out on the surface. Few fossils are actually dug for until they are found first.

In the Hell Creek formation in the Dakotas dinosaur fossils are lost to erosion all the time. They are never seen until it's too late, they are simply washed away.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/travel/11dino.html?ref=dinosaurs&_r=0

[whistler162]

18. Okay so Mel Brooks was in England

850,000 years ago. Guess he lied about his age.

[RainDog]

21. k&r n/t

[Boom Sound 416]

25. England has beaches!

[jtuck004]

31. "... Footprints on the sands of time ;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate ;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

From "A PSALM OF LIFE"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Here.

I don't believe in ghosts, and it was a time when women were given even less credit for their work than now, but I still like the basic idea of this poem...

[WinkyDink]

33. I don't think anyone unschooled ought raise one's eyes in disbelief at a BRITISH MUSEUM SCIENTIST.

[Drew Richards]

38. Blah blah four toes...Hobbit tracks hobbit tracks every already knows hobbits come from England

[tritsofme]

44. Until their city was destroyed in an ancient nuclear war!

Oops, wrong thread. This is pretty neat.

[xfundy]

48. Notice how there's only one set of prints?

Jesus was carrying me. Also, this whole story reminds me I haven't had a vacation in like, forever.

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

49. Remember (Walking in the Sand)

[undeterred]

56. No shoes. No shirt. No service.

[arthritisR_US]

60. Cool, an ancients' stroll in the park. nt

[Matariki]

61. Left by Arthur Dent

[Wounded Bear]

71. If it was him....

wouldn't there be Marvin tracks beside them?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

63. Probably pre-Nike and basketball.