Not elder law: World’s oldest footprints confirmed in Italy

Source:  New Scientist

It’s official: the oldest human footprints ever found are 345,000years old, give or take 6000. Known as the “devils’ trails”, they havebeen preserved in volcanic ash atop the Roccamonfina volcano in Italy.  The prints were first described to the world by Paolo Mietto and colleagues of the University of Padova in Italy in 2003 after amateur archaeologists pointed them out.  Atthe time, the team estimated that the prints were anywhere between385,000 and 325,000 years old, based on when the volcano was thought tohave last erupted.  Now, Stéphane Scaillet and colleagues at the Laboratory of Climatic and Environmental Sciences, France, have used argon dating techniques to verify the prints’ age.  “Theirmore rigorous methods confirm that these are the oldest humanfootprints ever found,” says Mietto. The new findings also confirm thatthe owners of the footprints were Homo heidelbergensis.

Miettois setting off next week to excavate a second site, some 3 kilometresaway. Early visits have convinced him that there are more humanfootprints, and he says it is highly likely that they are the same age.  The excavations should help reveal a trail that was used by early humans.