On the sands of time - the footprints of Ileret

I know that much has been written on this elsewhere over the last few days,
but this blog is about the stories that sand can tell us - how could I possibly
omit this one? The image above is indistinguishable from what we would see if we
looked over our shoulder as we were enjoying the sensation of sand between our
toes on the beach. But this footprint is 1.5 million years old.

In the latest issue of Science, an again satisfyingly international
group of researchers (from the UK, the US, South Africa, and Kenya) report on
the discovery at Ileret, in Northern Kenya, of extraordinary sets of footprints
of our ancestors, in this case Homo ergaster, an earlier, larger
version of the widespread Homo erectus. Analysis of the tracks shows
that, in terms of their gait and posture, these people (and I see no reason not
to use that word) walked through the sand in exactly the way we do. Their
journey took them across ancient river beds along the edge of Lake
Turkana, through a landscape that would have differed little from
today’s, periodic flash floods sweeping down the valleys, showers of ash falling
from erupting volcanoes. Lake Turkana is the northernmost of the great lakes of
the East African Rift Valleys, the fault-bounded scars of long-lived crustal
extension, and geologically active landscapes. It would seem quite likely that
this group of our ancient relatives were hastening to avoid a flooding river -
it was the sand carried by that shifting river that filled in their footprints
and preserved them for us to wonder at. It’s easy to forget how literally
fragmented is the record of our ancestors, broken and dispersed by active
geology, and, while preserved footprints are even more rare than bone fragments,
they nevertheless have an emotional immediacy. We look at the photo above and
know the sensation of the person as they made it, we can identify with
them.

The science is fascinating, and sources are listed below, but for me, and
probably for most of us, it’s that emotional identification, the resonance that
is so compelling. In the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (modified slightly
to recognize the greatness of both genders):

Lives of great men and women all remind us
  We can make our lives
sublime,
And departing, leave behind us
  Footprints on the sands of time.[http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/323/5918/1197;
http://archaeology.about.com/b/2009/02/26/ancient-human-footprint-discovery-in-kenya.htm;
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=15-million-footprints-uncover.
Footprint photo Professor Matthew Bennett, Bournemouth University; Rift Valleys
map, USGS] SIGNATURE

Originally published at: https://throughthesandglass.typepad.com/through_the_sandglass/2009/03/on-the-sands-of-time-the-footprints-of-ileret.html