Just a couple of years ago these footprints were found in White Sands, a desert in New Mexico. They are obviously human in make, but even when they were discovered in 2021 experts knew they were special as they were thought to be the oldest signs of humans in North America. Now it has been confirmed.
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00:00 [Music]
00:03 Just a couple of years ago, these footprints were found in White Sands, a desert in New Mexico.
00:08 They are obviously human and make, but even when they were discovered in 2021,
00:12 experts knew they were special, as they were thought to be the oldest signs of humans in North America.
00:17 Now, researchers have confirmed their age, finding that they are indeed the oldest signals of humanity
00:22 on the continent, and that they are 21,500 years old. That means they were here during the last
00:28 glacial maximum, a period during the Pleistocene Epoch. During that time, sea levels were a whopping
00:33 400 feet lower than today, and 25% of all land on Earth was covered in glaciers. Researchers
00:39 initially confirmed the age of the footprints by radiocarbon dating seeds that were embedded in the
00:44 prints, then going back and doing the same with pollen that was discovered on the same sedimentary
00:48 levels, which corroborated those numbers. They went through exhaustive measures to date the prints,
00:53 as many people couldn't believe that humans were in North America that early, with their researchers
00:57 writing about their findings, "The immediate reaction in some circles of the archaeological
01:02 community was that the accuracy of our dating was insufficient to make the extraordinary claim
01:06 that humans were present in North America during the last glacial maximum."