
120k-year-old footprints offer early evidence for humans in Arabia - diodorus
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/these-120000-year-old-footprints-offer-early-evidence-humans-arabia
======
sandworm101
Funny Saudi Arabia + fossil footprints story:

Back in the 90s I was in saudi arabia when a national geographic story came
out about some fossil footprints. Because of the size/spacing of the prints it
was evident that two proto-humans, one smaller, were walking together while
perhaps holding hands. So the cover art was two hairy proto-humans, one male
and one female, naked, walking hand in hand away from the viewer. Needless to
say this was an issue for the saudi censors, who at that time would ink over
magazine covers by hand.

By censoring anything you suggest that these are people, not animals, and
thereby acknowledge evolution. Do you censor the female? The male? Both? On
store shelves I saw every interpretation. My favorite was the one that ignored
the nakedness, censored only the hand holding.

~~~
mhh__
Man, it would be so bad if a western democracy had a similarly prudish
censorship policy online, right? (Welcome to the UK in 2020, where by default
I can't watch whatever I want and I don't think my ISP will let me download a
VPN at all)

~~~
davisoneee
Calling it 'censorship' seems a bit inflated...you can request UK ISPs to
remove the content filter. Further, the UK government retracted the internet
'porn' bill, which was a big driver of the act anyway.

I think it's a bit unfair to conflate 'always on' and 'default on, but easy to
remove'.

edit: also, I'm in the UK, and happily using a VPN on Windows, Linux, and
Android with no issues.

~~~
mhh__
It might just be a virgin media thing but I cannot browse to any vpn sites but
the filtering is done differently the porn filter i.e. it's by government
request but not publicly enough to warrant a redirect to their site

~~~
cameronh90
Nobody else I know on Virgin Media is experiencing this. Is it possible you
have some malware on your device/network?

~~~
Kataphract
I swapped to TalkTalk recently and have the same problem. All but the most
obscure VPN sites are blocked. My guess is because using them is aginst TOS?

~~~
g_p
Have you checked that you've turned off any "parental controls". I believe by
default, new connections come with a "family friendly" filter. And that
includes VPN services, since (presumably by their logic) VPNs are the first
thing a kid will download to get around this filter...

------
teleforce
Expect to see more archaeology findings around the area of North or North West
of Saudi Arabia. This area has been an archeology blindspots until 1980s [1].

Fun facts, the green pastures of Arabian Peninsula in ancient times has been
mentioned in a well known authentic hadith (saying of Muhammad), "The Hour
will not begin until the land of the Arabs once again becomes meadows and
rivers”[2].

[1][http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/3224/1/1.pdf](http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/3224/1/1.pdf)

[2][https://sunnah.com/muslim/12/76](https://sunnah.com/muslim/12/76)

~~~
MichaelZuo
The evidence for multiple waves of human migration out of Africa is looking
more and more likely.

It’s been ignored primarily due to the political, philosophical, perhaps even
meta philosophical reasons. As the implication is that significant genomic
differences existed within and between the early human populations. And so
whether all of them qualify as “human”.

The same reason why it took so long for some people to have significant
Neanderthal ancestry to become accepted fact. The average percentage of
Neanderthal ancestry seems to increase as you move eastwards to East Asia.

~~~
logicslave12
This type of information is actively suppressed and speaking about is shamed

~~~
amanaplanacanal
I’ve never heard about this being an problem. Can you point to some discussion
of this topic?

~~~
logicslave12
Bring it up at work and see how well that goes. Also I can’t really point to
discussion on it, almost all of it is deleted on platforms like Reddit

~~~
everly
I mean, seems like a weird thing to discuss at work? Also this feels like
concern trolling. You can have whatever discussion you want about the
potential for there having been multiple waves of human migration out of
Africa. Do it respectfully and without weird racist undertones and things will
work out fine.

~~~
jokethrowaway
It depends on the environment. We had two "social crisis" like this in my
workplace. One was a triggered by an innocent remark about someone not seeing
the wage gap between women and men in his personal circle and then mentioning
there are too many variables to say a wage gap exist.

The person got massively and publicly shut down by leaders in the company who
wrote lengthy messages about it and explained holding this belief wasn't
acceptable in this company and rationalised the reaction with other leaders
saying it was a way to send a message. They didn't manage to get the guy fired
(but they tried!) and he left after a few months of radio silence.

Sure thing, nobody else dared to say something about it but the victim got
messages of support by tons of people afraid to speak up.

My opinion is that, given it's a company's private space, the company could
limit freedom of speech and ban public political discussion to avoid this
scenario - still, seeing people trying to force their dogma on other people
was shocking.

~~~
matheusmoreira
Think as you like, but behave like others.

[https://medium.com/@alexanderemmanual/law-38-think-as-you-
li...](https://medium.com/@alexanderemmanual/law-38-think-as-you-like-but-
behave-like-others-8ff0fd646406)

------
bt1a
It's a bit mindblowing to consider that the imprinted weight of a human
through the form of a foot survives one hundred twenty thousand years.
Thousands of generations of human life passed, and this remarkably small piece
of evidence remained locked in time, waiting to be discovered by future
scientists.

Alright I need to slow down on the coffee this morning.

~~~
sandworm101
>> one hundred twenty thousand years. Thousands of generations of human life

That's nothing. There are plenty of fossil dinosaur footprints aged many
_millions_ of years.

~~~
layoutIfNeeded
For what it's worth, fossilized "footprints" go way back to the appearance of
multicellular organisms, the Ediacaran Period 600Mya:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacaran_biota](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacaran_biota)

~~~
blocked_again
The article show the picture of a fossilized footprint. Could that have been
one of our ancestors or a relative?

------
danans
Fascinating find, but as the article implies, the climate/landscape of the
Arabian Peninsula was very wet then, and what we call the Red Sea today was at
time likely an estuary, so hardly a barrier.

So what we call Arabia and Africa weren't distinct land masses, and if
anything it would be surprising if they were not inhabited by hominids similar
to those nearby in today's Africa.

~~~
sradman
> what we call the Red Sea today was at time likely an estuary

The Red Sea Rift is quite recent [1] in geological time but not 120 kya
recent.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Sea_Rift#Spreading_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Sea_Rift#Spreading_model)

~~~
danans
The phenomenon that would have made it an estuary on the hominid and homo
sapiens timescale is lower sea levels due to ice ages.

40% of the Red Sea is only 100 m deep, and during the last major ice age 20kya
sea levels were 120 m lower than they are today.

[https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-9...](https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-90-481-2639-2_129#:~:text=The%20Red%20Sea%20proper%20is,is%20shallower%20than%20100%20m).

~~~
sradman
Marine Isotope Stage 5 [1] was a high sea level interglacial:

> Thus, the present interglacial, the Holocene, is compared with MIS 5 or the
> interglacials of Marine Isotope Stage 11.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Isotope_Stage_5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Isotope_Stage_5)

------
Quarrel
Very cool.

This tracks pretty well with the earliest times talked about now for people in
Australia. Somewhere in that ballpark people needed to be walking out of
Africa so they could end up in Australia.

~~~
menybuvico
Yep. There most likely were multiple waves of emigration from Africa. It's
just that the most recent one is the one that made the largest impression in
the gene pool.

------
sradman
The paper _Human footprints provide snapshot of last interglacial ecology in
the Arabian interior_ [1]:

> Diatom paleoecology and sedimentary analysis indicate that Alathar was an
> oligotrophic (nutrient-poor) and shallow freshwater lake for the majority of
> its existence. This is consistent with similar-aged nearby freshwater
> paleolake deposits situated in the southern reaches of a “freshwater
> corridor” that connected the Arabian interior to the Levant and northeast
> Africa at times during marine isotope stage 5 (MIS 5; ~130 to 80 ka)

> The lake surface is heavily trampled, which probably reflects a dry season
> during which herbivores congregate around diminishing water supplies, and is
> consistent with sedimentary evidence for the drying up of the lake at that
> time. A total of 376 footprints were recorded, of which 177 could be either
> confidently or provisionally referred to an ichnotaxon. Seven hominin
> footprints were confidently identified... we argue that H. sapiens was
> responsible for the tracks at Alathar.

> Given their similar orientation, distances from one another, and differences
> in size, they are interpreted as two, or up to three, individuals traveling
> in concert.

> Elephants, in particular, suggest the regional presence of freshwater
> sources and substantial plant biomass, while the size of the tracks is
> suggestive of a species larger than any extant taxon.

> Some of the ungulate prints are consistent in shape and size with a giant
> buffalo, possibly Syncerus, a taxon previously identified at nearby MIS 5
> sites.

The research paints a wonderful picture of this "freshwater corridor" during
the MIS 5 interglacial. The question I have is what caused the ecology to dry
out in our own interglacial? Did the Great Rift change enough in 100 kyr to
impact the local climate this much?

[1]
[https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/38/eaba8940](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/38/eaba8940)

------
he0001
This sounds very cool, but how do they know that they are actual footprints
and not just two holes that accidentally looks like footprints?

~~~
klyrs
[https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/38/eaba8940](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/38/eaba8940)

Seven, actually. They found hundreds of footprints of various animals, about
half of which were too questionable to identify.

Footprints are often identified because they get filled in with a different
material than the substrate. One on its own might not be enough for a positive
ID, but this is way bigger than "two holes"

~~~
gus_massa
I agree.

I don't know why the press article choose the first image of Figure 4, the
second image is much more convincing. (You can see clearly the toes, except
the middle one.)

Also, in the bottom center of Figure 1 you it is possible to see that they
found 4 footprints in a row, and if you imagine that there are one or two
missing footprints they are at the correct distance, like the path of someone
waking. (Why there are only right footprints and no left footprints?)

~~~
klyrs
> Why there are only right footprints and no left footprints?

Pure speculation here (plus some experience/training in tracking), but if
somebody is walking along a shore with one foot in mud, and the other foot in
dirt, they only leave deep impressions on one side. Similarly, if they're
walking with one foot in shallow water, and one foot in mud, then one side
will erode much faster than the other.

------
diebeforei485
I mean, we've known of early humans in Arabia for quite a while now.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jebel_Faya](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jebel_Faya)

------
Threeve303
Just as likely, it could be evidence that humans gain the ability to time
travel in the future and decide to go 120k years into the past.

