© Andrzej BoczarowskiThese footprints, found at Trachilos in western Crete, have been attributed to an ancient human ancestor that walked upright some 5.7 million years ago.
Human-like footprints have been found stamped into an ancient sea shore fossilised beneath the Mediterranean island of Crete.
They shouldn't be there.
Testing puts the rock's age at 5.7 million years.
That's a time when palaeontologists believe our human ancestors had only apelike feet.
And they lived in Africa.
But a study into the Trachilos, western Crete, prints determines them to feature prominent human features and an upright stance.
And that's significant as the human foot has a unique shape. It combines a long sole, five short toes, no claws - and a big toe.
In comparison, the foot of a Great Ape look much more like a human hand.
And that step in evolution wasn't believed to have taken place until some 4 million years ago.
© Gerard D. Gierliński et al / ElsevierComparison of Trachilos footprint with bears (top), non-hominin primates (middle), and hominins (bottom). (a) Brown bear (b) Grizzly bear (c) Vervet monkey (d) Lowland gorilla (e) chimpanzee. (f) modern human (g) Trachilos footprint (h) modern human foot (i) Archaic Homo footprint.
Published in the latest edition of Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, the study's conclusions are bound to raise eyebrows in the human evolution community.
"The interpretation of these footprints is potentially controversial," the study's abstract admits.
"The print morphology suggests that the trackmaker was a basal member of the clade Hominini (human ancestral tree), but as Crete is some distance outside the known geographical range of pre-Pleistocene (2.5 million to 11,700 years ago) hominins we must also entertain the possibility that they represent a hitherto unknown late Miocene primate that convergently evolved human-like foot anatomy."
Put simply, the study argues there was another - previously unidentified - human-like creature walking the Earth long before we believed it was possible.© APA reconstruction of the skeleton of Australopithecus sediba, centre, next to a small-bodied modern human female, left, and a male chimpanzee.
The existing pool of evidence into humanity's origins is built around Australopithecus fossils found in south and East Africa, along with a 3.7 million-year-old set of upright hominin (human ancestor) footprints found in Tanzania.
Called the Laetoli footprints, these are believed to have been made by Australopithecus with a narrow heel and poorly defined arch.
In contrast, a set of 4.4 million-year-old prints found in Ethiopia are believed from the hominin Ardipithecus ramidus. These prints are much closer to that of an ape than a modern human.
But the Trachilos footprints, at 5.7 million years, appear to be more human than Ardipithecus.
© Gerard D. Gierliński et al / ElsevierMaps and photos detailing the location and shape of the track-bearing stone in Crete.
They were found by the study's lead author, Gerard Gierlinski, while he was holidaying on the island of Crete in 2002. The palaeontologist at the Polish Geological Institute has taken more than a decade to analyse his find.
The Trachilos prints have a big toe very similar to our own in size, shape and position. It has a distinct ball on its sole. It has the human-like sole. It doesn't have claws.
They were pressed into the firm but wet sands of a small river delta at a time when the Sahara was lush and green, and savanna extended from North Africa around the Eastern Mediterranean. Crete itself was still part of the Greek mainland then.
© Gerard D. Gierliński et al / ElsevierThe three most well-preserved footprints, each shown as a photo (left), laser surface scan (middle) and scan with interpretation (right). a was made by a left foot, b and c by right feet. Scale bars, 5cm. 1—5 denote digit number; ba, ball imprint; he, heel imprint.
They have been dated using foraminifera (analysis of marine microfossils) as well as their position beneath a distinctive sedimentary rock layer created when the Mediterranean Sea dried up about 5.6 million years ago.
The footprints' discovery also comes shortly after the fragmentary fossils of a 7.2 million-year-old primate Graecopithecus, discovered in Greece and Bulgaria, were reclassified as belonging to the human ancestral tree.
Reader Comments
Thanks!
I'll try below.
Thanks again.
R.C.
* Like 'politically incorrect', I - and others, I'm sure - used that long before it became a title of some movie or TV show I never saw.
RC
R.C.
I earlier today wrote my family an email which had, as typical, sundry asides and footnotes, which seem pertinent here., so I'm going to try to retain, verbatim, what I wrote to my family earlier about 'official versions' (of something else completely)
What's the 'official version' here? Well that the Earth is about 5? Billion? years old, and yet the moon is illogically older.
Official Version: That proto-mankind only showed up, at the latest, 2.5 million years ago. Yet the article lists two proto-primates at ages twice and thrice that (5 and 7.5 million years..)
Re 'official versions', I've learned to subscribe to Mark Twain's point:
" Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
I likewise find myself thinking of the spherical rust proof obviously machined steel? spheres being constantly found in the deepest mines of South Africa, and which, like the Giant Skeletons once commonly found and reported in America, are now ignored and so consistently "lost' that you wonder if the ghost of Rose Mary Woods has extended that 26 minutes into years or centuries.
Like good SOTT folk, I always try to keep my mind open and realize as absolutely true very very few things. E.g., I don't believe we exist in some 'Matrix movie' like world; and although I've never personally seen it, I do believe that the Eiffel Tower truly exists. If Ihad to give odds, both would be at above 99.998% which I call '99%' because the more I learn, the more I realize how truly little I know as fact, save that I'm here to wonder about it, and per Descartes, Cogito, ergo sum.
In the meantime, I note that it's nice that the Science Publication published this, but sad that he had to preface it so carefully, and apparently, although he must have known of that huge age difference about 9 years ago, he had to perfect his paper and probably trim 'concerning' points that are likely to be the most relevant, and further keep this 'getting closer to truth' observation of fact hidden for all that time, due to fears of 'official versions.'
I also told my family:
. Re 'official versions" which I am, these days, almost always cynical about, as they seem unusually and consistently INcorrect where and when it's the most material and critical - where "the rubber hits the road", if you will; at least in the time I've been aware of the differences between 'official versions' and reality.
Finally, everyone should go from the above article to this one re "Conspiracy Theories."
How the CIA invented "conspiracy theories"
A year or two ago, I saw the much-touted science fiction film Interstellar, and although the plot wasn't any good, one early scene was quite amusing. For various reasons, the American government...It's great!!
R.C.
P.s., Rocky, Thanks again.
RC