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Britain's Eastern Coast Yields Oldest Human Footprints Outside Africa

Posted by timothy on from the before-the-invention-of-wellingtons dept.

schwit1 writes "They were a British family on a day out — almost a million years ago. Archaeologists announced Friday that they have discovered human footprints in England that are between 800,000 and 1 million years old — the most ancient found outside Africa, and the earliest evidence of human life in northern Europe. A team from the British Museum, London's Natural History Museum and Queen Mary college at the University of London uncovered imprints from up to five individuals in ancient estuary mud at Happisburgh on the country's eastern coast."

5 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. But we weren't there so SEE... by Capt.Gingi · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm sorry, but how can anyone really believe that these pre-date the creation of the planet? Was anyone THERE at THAT TIME to OBSERVE exactly when and by whom the footprints were made? Seems pretty silly to me to believe in this non-obervational "science"! I've got a good book that I can recommend that answers all these questions and more....

    1. Re:But we weren't there so SEE... by claytongulick · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Ok, I try to avoid getting involved in religious conversations like this, but you are coming across as a typical ignorant elitist here, sneering down at things you clearly don't understand. We all get that you aren't religious, but that doesn't give you the right to present skewed information taken out of context. So, I'm going to completely waste my time here and present some *actual* information on each one of your points in the vain hope that in the future you will temper your snark.

      Questions like:

      1. Can I sell my daughter into slavery? Yes!

      What you aren't saying, is that at the time selling children into slavery was a common practice throughout much of the "civilized" world. This 'law' was put in to place to *protect women*. The reason why is that normally when a child was sold into servitude, they would be freed after a period of time. Since (by far) the reason that women were taken as 'servants' or ('hand-maidens' depending on the interpretation) was as second wives or concubines, it was grossly unfair to the woman to then release her from service after she had been used as a sex object for years. No one would want to marry her, and she was essentially screwed. To protect against that, this law was put into place saying essentially, that if you're going to take this woman on, you have to care for her forever, you can't just have sex with her for a few years while she's pretty and then kick her out once she gets older.

      2. Should I avoid all contact with women during her period? Yes!

      Again, you're totally cherry picking here. Leviticus rules of cleanliness were generally *good* things. At the time, they simply didn't understand biology, and sanitary practices were spotty at best. This was the origin of laying down some rules for sanitary practices, which is a good thing, even if they seem strange to us now. And by the way, Leviticus' admonishments were by no means limited only to women:

      Leviticus 1-5:
      "Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: 'When any man has a discharge from his body, his discharge is unclean. And this shall be his uncleanness in regard to his discharge; whether his body runs with his discharge, or his body is stopped up by his discharge, it is his uncleanness. Every bed is unclean on which he who has the discharge lies, and everything on which he sits shall be unclean. And whoever touches his bed shall wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean until evening."

      This was relating to abnormal discharge, no one really understood STD's, they were just doing their best at the time. But great job completely misrepresenting Leviticus as anti-female in order to push some sort of agenda.

      3. Can I buy slaves from neighbouring nations? Yes!

      Again, you're totally misrepresenting the law here. A the time, this was incredibly progressive. Slavery was rampant and commonly accepted, to limit the bounds of slavery and who could be enslaved was a great step in the right direction. Considering that even the U.S. still hadn't worked out slavery issues as of only 140 years ago, applying 21st century morals to a progressive law created to put bounds and limits on slavery thousands of years ago... well, that's just childish.

      4. Should I kill someone who works on a Sunday? Yes!

      I don't even understand your point here. Are you saying this is still a problem? I mean, I agree - we need to stop the rampant slaughter of all the people who work on Sundays in America. Oh wait... you mean, this doesn't happen? At all? So, clearly it was a law intended for another time - a time that penalties were pretty damn harsh for just about any infraction. There's some question about how tightly this was int

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      Drinking habits can be dangerous. You can choke on the cloth and the nuns will wonder where their clothes are.
    2. Re:But we weren't there so SEE... by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What you aren't saying, is that at the time...
      At the time, they simply didn't understand... ...they were just doing their best at the time...
      So, clearly it was a law intended for another time...
      A the time, this was incredibly progressive...

      Thanks for re-making my actual point for me, which is not that the bible was written by idiots, but that it's still used, by many idiots, as a justification for their own prejudices and wilful ignorance of fact - which appeared to be the OP's position (with the caveat that the best satire is indistinguishable from that which it satirises).

      But great job completely misrepresenting Leviticus as anti-female

      I wasn't trying to represent it as anti-female. I'm trying to represent it as being millennia out of date.

      Religious or not, the Bible in an incredible historical document

      Agreed, both as you meant it and other meanings of the word "incredible." Though perhaps only "historical" in the sense of "written thousands of years ago," not "everything within actually happened

      that should be treated with respect and educated thoughtfulness

      Perhaps in some contexts. But not as a guide for living your life in the 21st century, which, again, is the position the OP took which I took issue with.

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      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  2. Re:What does this mean for the "out of Africa" mod by Zocalo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Depends on the varient of the theory. One of those is that there were multiple diasporas of early humans out of Africa, but most of the early explorers died out in the ice ages or other calamities, while others may have survived longer to become the various off shoots of the human tree found in the fossil records. I'd say that idea doesn't really suffer from this find, if anything it strengthens it and establishes that humans must have started expanding out of their ancestral homelands much sooner than many may have thought and certainly doesn't prevent all of us current humans from from being decended from a much more recent Mitochondrial Eve that lived in Africa approx 100,000-200,000 years ago.

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    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
  3. Arthur Philip Dent by denisbergeron · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's obviously footprint of Arthur Philip Dent when he was back in the past abord the phone's cleaner spaceship.

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    Ceci n'est pas une Signature !