Ancient Footprints
The receding sea in May 2013 then brushed off the sands of Happisburgh Beach, Norfolk, England and revealed a hidden secret: the existence of a series of longitudinal sightings over the rocks. It looks like a human foot.
Scientists suspect strongly, it is indeed human footprints, adults and children. That comes from ancient times, about 800,000 years ago. That is the oldest evidence found outside of Africa.
Previously, one of the oldest human remains is the "footprint" found by the famous paleontologist Mary Leakey in 1977 in the Laetoli region of Tanzania. This relic is very horrendous scientific world. According to research, the age of the layers where the footprints were found is 3.6 million years old. Russell Tuttle, who witnessed the footprints, wrote: "The footprints may have originated from a small, barefoot Homo sapiens ... The recognizable morphological features of the creature's foot that leave the trail are indistinguishable from the feet of modern humans."
The oldest human footprints in Europe
At Ileret and Koobi Fora in Kenya, which was about 1.5 million years ago. "This is an amazing discovery," said Nick Ashton of the British Museum, who leads the research team - which also includes two other institutions, the National History Museum and Queen Mary University London, as published by News.com.au on Saturday (8/2 / 2014).
The trail was found on an ancient mud sediment site, where a number of previous inventions were made, such as stone tools, bone fossils - including the remains of an ancient elephant mammoth.
"At first we were not sure what we saw at that time, after removing the sand and draining the seawater, it was suspected that the hollows were allegedly human, we quickly recorded it before the sea eroded it," Ashton added.
Dr Isabelle De Groote from Liverpool John Moores University who examined the 3D scan results from the basin confirmed that it was a human footprint.
The traces are allegedly abandoned by a group of humans, comprising at least one adult male and a smaller number of suspected women and children. "They're supposedly a hunting family," Ashton said. Estimated age of footprints, 800 thousand years based on site geological position under glacial deposits. Also because the other fossils there are from mammoths, horses, and rats that are now extinct.
Scientists say humans who leave these footprints may be related to Homo antecessor, or 'human pioneer' whose fossils are found in Spain. The team's findings were announced Friday and published in the journal PLoS ONE. It is estimated that Homo antecessor moved to the now Norfolk area of the region that connects Britain and all of Europe about a million years ago.
This species went extinct about 800,000 years ago because it was much colder weather shortly after first setting foot in Norfolk. [More...]
Ancient Building
Olduvai Gorge, or Oldupai Gorge, in Tanzania is one of the most important paleoanthropological sites in the world; it has proven invaluable in furthering understanding of early human evolution. A steep-sided ravine in the Great Rift Valley that stretches across East Africa, it is about 48 km (30 mi) long, and is located in the eastern of Serengeti Plains in the Arusha Region not far, about 45 kilometres (28 miles) from Laetoli, another important archaeological site of early human occupation. The British / Kenyan paleoanthropologist-archeologist team at Olduvai Gorge which achieved great advances in human knowledge and world-renowned status.
Homo habilis, probably the first early human species, occupied Olduvai Gorge approximately 1.9 million years ago (mya); then came a contemporary australopithecine, Paranthropus boisei, 1.8 mya, then Homo erectus, 1.2 mya. Homo sapiens is dated to have occupied the site 17,000 years ago.
The site is significant in showing the development of humanity in the earliest humans, or hominins, largely as revealed in the production and use of stone tools. And prior to tools, the evidence of scavenging and hunting-highlighted by the presence of gnaw marks that predate cuts of meat versus plant material in the early hominin diet. The collecting of tools and animals remains in a central area is evidence of developing social interaction and communal activity. All these factors indicate the increase in the cognitive capacities at the beginning of the period of hominids transitioning to hominins-that is, to human-form and behavior. [More...]
The ruins of a stone cottage, discovered by Louis Leakey in the 1970s in the Olduvai Gorge area. The ruins of the cottage lay in a 1.7-million-year-old layer. It is well known that such structures, similar to those still present in Africa, can only be produced by Homo sapiens, or in other words, modern humans
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