Winter Solstice

Friday, September 18, 2020

Human footprints dating back 120,000 years found in Saudi Arabia


120,000 years ago in what is now known as Saudi Arabia, a small band of people stopped to drink at a shallow lake that was also popular with other animal species.

The people most likely hunted the large animals but they did not stay long,  the shallow lake was just a stopping point on a longer journey.


The prints were dated using a technique called optical stimulated luminescence -- blasting light at quartz grains and measuring the amount of energy emitted from them. 


In total, seven out of the hundreds of prints discovered were identified as human, including four that, given their similar orientation, distances from one another and differences in size, indicates that two or three individuals were  traveling together.