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A Footnote
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October 1, 1997
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by Mark Rose
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Three fossilized human footprints have been discovered northwest of Cape Town, South Africa. Dating from about 117,000 years ago, the prints were made by an anatomically modern human walking on wet sand near the edge of a lagoon. The find was made in 1995 but not announced until August 14, 1997. While unusual, the footprints offer little new information about the behavior of early humans and, in this sense, are not comparable to the 3.5-million-year-old australopithecine prints preserved at Laetoli, Tanzania. Nonetheless, the National Geographic Society has claimed that they somehow provide a more direct link to early humans than do tools or fossil bones, and that they may be connected in some way with "Eve," the hypothetical source of all mitochondrial DNA in modern humans. A more objective and more useful assessment of the discovery could be made using basic metric analysis. For example, the footprints are 8 1/2 inches long, which, the Washington Post noted, is the equivalent of a woman's size 7 to 7 1/2 shoe.
© 1997 by the Archaeological Institute of America
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