5,000-year-old human footprints discovered

[Still Waters]

When a pair of fishermen waded into the frigid waters of the southern Baltic Sea about 5,000 years ago, they probably didn't realize that the shifting seabed beneath their feet was recording their every move. But it was.

The long-lost evidence of that prehistoric fishing trip two sets of human footprints and some Stone Age fishing gear was recently discovered in a dried up fjord, or inlet, on the island of Lolland in Denmark. There, archaeologists uncovered the prints alongside a so-called fishing fence, a tool that dates back to around 3,000 B.C.

http://www.foxnews.c...nts-discovered/

[pallidin]

Huh... great find.

[Atuke]

Pretty sweet. I didn't think 5,000 years is too significant though, maybe I'm missing something. Doesn't seem exactly Stone-Age just 5,000 years ago. Unless you're one of the flat-earthers or religious zealots who think the planet is only 6,000 years old. Anyway cool find, I hope they released their fish.

Edited November 15, 2014 by Atuke

[Mikenator]

Fred and barney!

[Aardvark-DK]

Danes can see anything as a world event...(I am a dane...this is not a world event hehe)

[jamesjr191]

Awesome!

[qxcontinuum]

So how exactly did they established the foot prints were 5000 years older?

Don't say the they establish the substrate to be from that time and therefore assuming everything embedded into it must be from then!

[kapow53]

These North American prints are interesting too.

http://westerndigs.org/oldest-human-footprints-in-north-america-identified/

[Likely Guy]

So how exactly did they established the foot prints were 5000 years older?

Don't say the they establish the substrate to be from that time and therefore assuming everything embedded into it must be from then!

I'm having trouble accessing the original article, but the one provided by kapow53 says, "Felstead and his team were able to date the tracks because they were preserved in travertine, a sedimentary rock that contains minute traces of uranium from the waters in which it formed.

Since uranium decays into the element thorium at predictable rates, the scientists were able to measure the ratio of those materials to determine the specimens’ ages."

[Peter B]

So how exactly did they established the foot prints were 5000 years older?

Don't say the they establish the substrate to be from that time and therefore assuming everything embedded into it must be from then!

I note that only the headline for the article says "5000 years". The article's author says "about 5000 years" in the first paragraph.

But in the guts of the article it says:

The Stone Age footprints were likely formed sometime between 5,000 B.C. and 2,000 B.C., Jensen said. At that time, the water level of the Baltic Sea was rising due to melting glaciers in northern Europe. Also at that time, prehistoric people were using these inlets as fishing grounds.

So the age of the footprints isn't given as "5000 years". The article instead quotes someone as saying their age is between 4000 years and 7000 years. My guess is that this is based on knowledge of when the region was known to have been tidal.