Ice Age Footprints Said Found in Outback

[leftchick]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051222/ap_on_sc/ancient_footprints

CANBERRA, Australia - Hundreds of human footprints dating back to the last Ice Age have been found in the remote Australian Outback, an official and media reported Thursday.

The 457 footprints found in Mungo National Park in western New South Wales state is the largest collection of its kind in the world and the oldest in Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported.

The prints were made in moist clay near the Willandra Lakes 19,000 to 23,000 years ago, the newspaper reported ahead of archeologists' report on the find to be published in the Journal of Human Evolution.

State Environment Minister Bob Debus said the site showed a large group of people walking and interacting.

"We see children running between the tracks of their parents; the children running in meandering circles as their parents travel in direct lines," Debus told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

[HeeBGBz]

1. It would be fascinating to know how those people lived.

The pre-humans.

[Jed Dilligan]

2. Hardly pre-human!

Ice Age folks were basically like us.

[HeeBGBz]

7. Just colder

[jeff30997]

3. Easy.

They never disappeared.Now they're called Freepers.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

4. especially since the planet is only

about 6,000 tears old.

[Warpy]

8. Nah, they were likely humans

Remember, the great migration out of Africa was roughly 55,000 years ago, at the height of the last ice age. Once our ancestors left Africa, they seemed to have gone coast and island hopping all the way to Oz pretty quickly. They were fully human, and all trace back through mitochondrial DNA to Africa.

In fact, the Aborigines have been termed the longest continuing culture on the planet, untroubled by the cultural conquest and warfare that swept the nation states in the rest of the world.

What I've read about them is utterly fascinating, an amazing way of looking at the world that is completely unlike anything I was raised with.

[HeeBGBz]

12. I don't know my timeframes

But I DID read Clan of the Cave Bear...

[aquart]

5. Kids never change.

[Lars39]

11. Isn't that the truth!

I've always said for every mile the parents hike, the kids cover at least 2 miles. :)

[greiner3]

6. How could they tell they were human footprints?

If it was during the ice age, that meant that they were all wearing boots or at least goolashes!
:shrug:

[Demeter]

10. I Don't Think Australia Had Any Glaciers

The Ice Age may have been cooler, but there were lots of green spots.

[wildcat78]

9. Wait..

The creationists tell me the earth was 6,000 years old? :sarcasm::sarcasm:

[GoddessOfGuinness]

13. This is obviously Satan's trickery

designed to make us believe the most holy and almighty BIBLE (insert genuflecting smilie here) is wrong!

[G_j]

14. A step back in time (20,000 yr old footprints found in Australia)

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/a-step-back-in-time/2005/12/22/1135032135738.html



A step back in time
December 23, 2005

The discovery of fossilised footprints provides a rare insight into ice-age life in Australia, writes Deborah Smith.

WHEN people first arrived in the Willandra region about 50,000 years ago they found freshwater lakes brimming with fish. "There were golden perch, murray cod, mussels, crayfish and yabbies," says Steve Webb, a professor of Australian studies at Bond University who has spent decades researching the area.

Smaller pools of water near the system of 19 large interconnected lakes would have been good places for other activities, "particularly the hunting of water birds and a variety of terrestrial game", he says.

The amount of tools and artefacts left behind by families clustered around the lakes suggests the population peaked about 43,000 years ago. And by 40,000 years ago, when Mungo Lady and Mungo Man died at Willandra, a rich culture was flourishing there.

<snip>
Mungo National Park in western NSW is home to the oldest known cremation in the world - Mungo Lady's remains - and the oldest known ritual burial in the world - Mungo Man's ochre-covered skeleton. Now its sands have given up another world-class treasure: more than 450 fossilised human footprints, the biggest collection ever found.

..more..

[Wickerman]

15. Nah, they were planted by Satan to test your faith n/t

[xchrom]

16. isn't that cool?

and it has that whole -- just happened yesterday kind of feel to it.

[yellowcanine]

17. But just outside the photo frame there is a dino track and the

evilutionists don't want you to know that.....:sarcasm:

[xultar]

18. Barbara Bush, what were you doin over there back in the day?