The Ileret footprints are younger than the famous Laetoli footprints by about two million years—and thus closer to us modern human sorts. They were found in an area of the Rift Valley, near what would have been the bank of a stream or river, covered with soft and muddy soils and pools of water after a flood. The prints appear in two layers separated by 5 meters (15 feet) of soil and 20,000 years, but both sets appear to represent the steps of our human ancestor Homo erectus.
The research, conducted Matthew Bennett at Bournemouth and colleagues at Rutgers University and the National Museums of Kenya, will be published in Science magazine tomorrow, February 27, 2009. I was fortunate enough to obtain the research and pictures to go with it, so be sure to take a look at the Ileret Footprints Photo Essay.
Bennett, Matthew R., et al. 2009 Early Hominin Foot Morphology Based on 1.5-Million-Year-Old Footprints from Ileret, Kenya. Science 323:1197-1201. URL to abstract added 2 Mar 09.
A series of contour maps comparing the anatomy of different footprint populations compared in the paper. Left to right: the print at Laetoli (probably Australopithecus afarensis); the prints at FwJj14E and GAJi10 (which are Homo erectus); and the prints of modern Homo sapiens. Image courtesy Professor Matthew Bennett, Bournemouth University.
A new discovery of a set of ancient human footprints near the town of Ileret, Kenya, the second oldest set ever found, and likely made by Homo erectus about 1.5 million years ago, during the Lower Paleolithic period of human history.
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These are remarkable and exciting new anthropological finds at Ileret, Kenya. Yet, these 1.5 Ma footprints are the footprints of a pre-human hominin, Homo erectus — not our species, Homo sapiens. What is particularly significant is that the 1.5 Ma footprints of this prior species are indicative of modern human foot anatomy. Homo erectus was evolved about 2 million years ago in Africa. Nariokotome boy (KNM-WT 1500), a “missing link” stumbled across in 1984 in Lake Turkana, Kenya by a team led by Richard Leakey and Alan Walker, is an example of Homo erectus or Homo ergaster also 1.5 million years ago. That child’s eye sockets were overshadowed by a brow ridge, a ridge of bone that gave the skull a glowering expression, and there was a low, receding forehead leading to a long and flat crown. The boy had a tall, thin muscular physique, suited for radiating heat from his body in equatorial Africa. Even millions of years before that, Australopithecenes also were walking about on two feet, though their foot anatomy appears to be quite different from erectus. It is not that people adapted to equatorial climates by becoming tall and slender, or that people adapted to cold climates by becoming short and stocky. Rather, the Force tailors peoples and species to their environments and conditions. Creation: Towards a Theory of All Things by John Umana (amazon). When it came to feet, though, there was no need to ‘reinvent the wheel’ from the foot anatomy of Homo erectus in subsequent evolutions of Homo heidelbergensis and Homo sapiens. The feet you are walking around on today are essentially the same feet that erectus had 1.5 million years ago. They were designed for long-distance walking and running. Erectus walked upright as we do, communicated with each other but did not have language, and were essentially scavengers. Did we evolve from Homo erectus? No. But we did evolve 200,000 years ago in east Africa from another species that was evolved from erectus. Biological evolution and common ancestry are real and proved by the convergence of the sciences. Darwin and Wallace were correct in theorizing that all species descend from prior species. The question is, what is the causative mechanism for the evolution of a new species from a prior species?
The New York Times has a story on the Ileret footprints, written by the fabulous John Noble Wilford:
Prints Show a Modern Foot in Prehumans
And so does the fabulous Tim at Remote Central:
Ileret Fossil Footprints Indicate Anatomically Modern Foot at 1.5 Million Years Ago
SCIENCE AND BIBLE ARE NOT IN CONFLICT EXCEPT AS THE ANTHROPOLIGIST AND ARCHEOLOGIST MAKE IT SO! THE FACT IS THAT THERE’S NO MISSING LINK AND ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE EXISTANT ONE LIVING SPECIES EVER EVOLVED INTO ANOTHER TODAY OR IN HISTORY OF EARTH HABITATION. EVOLUTION WITHIN SPECIES DOES EXIST, HOWEVER. IDENTIFYING WHAT CREATED FOSSILIZED FOOTPRINTS IS A FASCINATING MYSTERY AS IS THE NAMING OF VARIOUS LIVING SPECIES THAT OCCUPIED THE EARTH FROM TIME TO TIME. CONNECTING THESE TO TODAYS SPECIES IS FUN EMOTIONAL SPECULATION NOT FACT! UNCOUNTABLE LIVING SPECIES HAVE COME AND GONE ON THIS TINY ROCK CALLED EARTH. CONNECTIONS SADLY CANNOT BE FACTUALLY SUPPORTED WHERE WARM BLOODED SPECIES ARE CONCERNED. DARWIN WROTE AND RECOGNIZED THERE IS REASON TO BELIEVE IN INTELLIGENT CREATION. SHOULD SEARCHING FOR HUMAN EXISTANCE STOP? OF COURSE NOT!! IT’S ALSO EVIDENT FACT OUR TRUE HUMAN ANCESTORS HAD SOME ABILITIES FAR BEYOND OURS TODAY. HOW SUCH HUMANS CREATED MANY WONDERS, LIVED, LOVED, COMMUNICATED, ETC. WE MAY YET FIND A KEY THERETO SO LET’S KEEP LOOKING AND LEARNING!