Thousands of years ago, a swath of land along what is now the western coast of England was a super highway for humans and animals. The ebb and flow of each tide reveals more of the ancient footprints that these long-gone travelers stamped into the once muddy route.
There are reminders of their travels along a stretch of coastline in England. Humans and animals were forced inland as glaciers melted and sea levels rose after the last ice age ended around 11,700 years ago.
Some of the trackways are more than 8,000 years old and date from the Middle Stone Age, according to a new study. The age of the tracks was determined by the age of the seeds recovered from the trees.
There are 12 well-preserved footprint beds, some of which are stacked, creating roughly 36 exposed layers. A variety of animals, including an extinct species of ox, can be seen in the patchwork of prints.
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According to Alison Burns, the study's lead author and an archaeologist at The University of Manchester in England, only some of the outcrops are visible. The older the outcroppings are.
11,000 years ago ice-age children frolicked in giant sloth puddles.
The tracks were discovered in the late 1970s by a scientist who thought they were koala footprints. The trackways were dating in the 1990s because a retired teacher saw them and realized they were old. People didn't think the prints were interesting before then.
Due to the erosion of the coastline as the sea eats away at the covering sand dunes, the footprints have continued to reveal themselves.
As the coastline is being eroded, the water is eating away at the cover that helped preserve the footprints. The tracks were made with sand and mud. This is how you get the footprints. The ones beneath the beds that are on top of each other are not vulnerable to erosion.
Of the dozens of prints discovered at the site, one in particular stood out, not only because it's the oldest track, imprinted approximately 8,500 years ago, but also because of the story it told researchers.
A person stopped on a human track that went forward four or five paces. They were barefoot and the mud between their toes was amazing. There were prints next to them. The person might have been looking for birds to hunt. There is a set of deer tracks near the crane. This amazing snapshot of the past can be found within 2 square meters.
She said that the footprint impressions are not unique to the area. A nearby archaeological site contains 900,000-year-old human prints that were exposed during a storm in Norfolk. The Formby site shows how people and animals lived thousands of years ago.
Humans and not animals are the focus of many footprint studies. I wanted to see how the animals and humans shared the same environment.
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