Now a days with the help of science and technology, researchers, scientists as well as archaeologists often discover many ancient things. But lately, without the help of any kind of science and technology, a group of archaeologists from the British Museum, the Natural History Museum and Queen Mary University of London has discovered 800,000-year-old footprints on a beachside sediment bed in England.
The archaeologists believe that these human footprints found near the village of Happisburgh, in Norfolk, 17 miles north-east of Norwich, are between 800,000 and 1 million years old and are evidence of the earliest known humans in northern Europe. The footprints suggest that the humans were Homo Antecessor (Pioneer Man) who were short and had small brain.
The archaeologists have collected around 50 sample footprints of which, only two have showed the toes in detail; around a dozen footprints are reasonably complete. Besides, the archaeologists think that the prints represent a group of at least one or two large adult males, at least two or three adult females or teenagers and at least three or four children.
According to archaeologists, the adult males had foot lengths of 25 or 26 centimeters – almost exactly the same as modern human adult males. The intermediate length feet (probably belonging to adult females or teenagers) were 18 to 21 centimeters long, while the probable children’s feet were 14 to 16 centimeters long. Using the normal ratio of foot length to body height, this suggests that the individuals were a mixed group of adults and children, and were between 0.9 and more than 1.7 meters tall.
The discovery is one of the most important archaeological discoveries ever made in Britain and is of great international significance. Now, the archaeologists are analyzing detailed 3D images of the prints to try to work out the approximate composition of the group.
The archaeologists have published a report regarding their discovery of 800,000-year-old footprints in England on February 7 in the journal PLOS ONE. See more about the find in the video below, produced by the British Museum.
Source: The British Museum
Thanks To: National Geographic, Independent
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