Ancient Human Footprints America: UK Research Supports Groundbreaking Dating
A fresh wave of evidence is changing how we think about the origins of life in the Americas, and it involves something as simple and remarkable as a footprint. Scientists now believe that ancient human footprints in America discovered at White Sands National Park in New Mexico may date back as far as 23,000 years, 10,000 years earlier than previously accepted. That’s according to new research co-led by British experts from Bournemouth University, working alongside US colleagues. And it’s shaking the foundations of long-held theories about when humans first arrived on the continent.
“It’s a remarkably consistent record,” said Vance Holliday, a seasoned archaeologist and geologist from the University of Arizona, who has studied human migration into North America for nearly five decades. “You get to the point where it’s really hard to explain all this away.”
The story began in 2012, when Holliday was invited to carry out fieldwork at White Sands, a vast, almost lunar landscape of gypsum dunes. A few hundred metres away from where he was examining sediment layers, fossilised ancient human footprints lay hidden, buried in clay and preserved beneath the sand. Unknown to Holliday at the time, these prints would go on to become one of the most significant archaeological finds of the decade.
It was only years later, in 2019, that researchers excavated the prints. By 2021, their analysis stunned the academic world. The tracks appeared to show that humans were present between 23,000 and 21,000 years ago, challenging the long-standing belief that the first inhabitants came much later, associated with the so-called Clovis culture. That culture, named after artefacts found in New Mexico in the 1930s, had been thought to represent the earliest American civilisation.
However, critics were quick to question the dating method used in 2021, which relied on seeds and pollen. Could those materials have moved through the soil layers over time, skewing the results?
To settle the debate, Holliday and his team went back. This time, they used ancient mud to conduct radiocarbon dating, a different approach, and one that yielded results strikingly similar to the original study.
According to the new paper, published in Science Advances, the mud layers date from around 22,400 to 20,700 years ago. That places the footprints firmly within the same period as previously thought. It also marks the third type of material used, along with seeds and pollen, to reach the same conclusion, and by a third independent lab. Across the board, 55 separate radiocarbon dates are now pointing to one thing: the accepted timeline of human settlement in North America needs revisiting.
“You realise that it basically contradicts everything that you’ve been taught about the peopling of North America,” said Jason Windingstad, a doctoral researcher who co-authored the latest study.
So where are the tools, the camps, the fire pits? Holliday is the first to admit that these questions are valid. “These people live by their artifacts,” he said. “They’re not just randomly dropping them.” The footprints, some only metres long, could have taken mere seconds to make, the kind of fleeting activity unlikely to leave permanent archaeological debris. As Windingstad pointed out, “It’s a strange feeling when you go out there and look at the footprints and see them in person.”
To date, the site remains protected under strict conservation controls. Part of it is within the US military’s missile testing range, making access difficult. Yet the layers of gypsum that now blanket the landscape have inadvertently preserved this glimpse into early human life, ancient human footprints that tell us someone was there, quietly walking by a lakeside millennia ago.
For British scientists involved, the international collaboration has been vital in building confidence around such a challenging theory. And while questions remain, there’s no denying the weight of the evidence now stacking up.
“As I say in the paper, it would be serendipity in the extreme to have all these dates giving you a consistent picture that’s in error,” Holliday said.
Even though he was confident in the 2021 findings to begin with, Holliday said he’s glad to have more data to support them. “I really had no doubt from the outset because the dating we had was already consistent,” he said. “We have direct data from the field – and a lot of it now.” His new study, published in Science Advances, reinforces conclusions first made public in a 2025 ScienceDaily feature titled Buried for 23,000 years: These footprints are rewriting American history, which brought the discovery to wider attention.
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