60 Ancient Human Footprints Found, Claimed to be the World’s Oldest

After the Glaciers Melt

After these glaciers melted between 16,000 and 13,500 years ago, migration toward South America began.

“This new finding definitely places humans in North America at a time when the ice sheet curtain was tightly closed,” said paleoecologist at Bournemouth University in England, Sally Reynolds.

So it’s very likely, Reynolds said, that humans migrated south in several waves and one before the last ice age. The early people may even have sailed along the Pacific coast.

“Then more came down after the ice receded,” Reynolds said.

The findings were published Thursday in the journal Science, and the study also sheds light on the closest traces of mammoths, monstrous wolves, and giant ground sloths that were prey to early humans.

–