Oct 22, 2023
As you walk through the white gypsum sands of White Sands
National Park in southern New Mexico, your footprints will likely
be quickly erased by shifting winds. So it’s somewhat of a
phenomenon of nature that the oldest footprints ever discovered in
North America are not only found here — in perfect form, having
withstood time and weather — but show that ancient humans lived
here much earlier than previously believed.
A research team from the U-S Geological Survey earlier this month
strengthened their findings released in 2021 that dated these
footprints to as much as 23,000 years old. That finding erased
previous theories that humans first arrived in North America some
11,000 years ago, after the end of the last Ice Age.
This week the Traveler’s Lynn Riddick talks with key researchers
from the U.S. Geological Survey team about their initial analysis
of the footprints as well as their follow-up study that confirmed
the age dating…and what it all means to our long-sought
understanding of human colonization on this continent.