The human-like footprints found on Crete are believed to be at least 6 million(!) years old, according to new research.

In 2017 scientists announced that they have made a special discovery on Crete: a considerable number of footprints have been found on the island in fossilized beach sediments. The prints have an unmistakable humanoid shape and are believed to be around 5.7 million years old.

enigmatic

The find caused quite a stir. “What makes the find controversial is the age and location of the prints,” acknowledged researcher Per Ahlberg in 2017. The prints date from a time when our ancestors (or so we thought) were still high and dry in Africa and still ape. like feet. It made the discovery of human-like footprints on a European island particularly puzzling. And the discoverers were also forced to consider the possibility that a primate living in Europe as yet unknown to us, separate from the primates in Africa, obtained a human-like foot through evolution – and thus threatened to mislead us 5.7 million years later – to keep open.

Even older

Scientists have now re-examined those footprints and – given the doubts surrounding the earlier dating – have also re-dated them. And guess what? The prints are even older than expected. in the sheet Scientific Reports An international team of researchers reports that the prints are likely 6.05 million years old.

Oldest human footprints

The prints are therefore by far the oldest human-like footprints that have been found to date. “The prints are almost 2.5 million years older than the prints found in Tanzania Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy) have been attributed,” notes researcher Uwe Kirscher.

The footprints were left by an organism that moved on two legs. In addition, the prints have several human-like features. For example, there is a big toe that is neatly located next to the other toes. The other toes get smaller and smaller the further they are from the big toe. In addition, the prints testify that the walker’s feet – just like ours – had a ball. Image: Per Ahlberg, Uppsala.

About the maker

The big question, of course, is who left these imprints behind. That remains unclear after this study. However, based on their study, the researchers still consider it plausible that it is a primitive hominin – and therefore not a primate with human features. A contender cited by the researchers is the Graecopithecus freybergic. Remains of this hominin then surfaced in 7.2 million-year-old deposits in Athens 250 kilometers away. Since Crete was still connected to the Greek mainland at that time, it cannot be ruled out that this hominin also reached Crete and left its mark there.

But that scenario also raises follow-up questions. Not least because it contradicts the idea that our ancestors originated in Africa and evolved there for millions of years before spreading towards Europe and Asia. “The evolutionary history and distribution of hominins is a matter of debate,” the researchers write in their paper. “One unresolved aspect is the origin and identification of the first representatives of the humanoid lineage. Despite numerous publications suggesting their origins in Africa, there is also evidence that the first hominids evolved in Eurasia.” The footprints belong – together with G. freybergic – until that proof. But how exactly we should interpret it remains shrouded in mystery. Did the hominids still originate in Eurasia and migrate from there to Africa and then evolve further there? Or is there parallel evolution where hominids evolved in both Europe and Africa? Or are the controversial and relatively scarce evidence for an ‘Out-of-Europe’ scenario after all misidentified and the remains and traces actually belong to primates rather than primitive hominids? Where fossil finds are often sought to gain more insight into the past, in this case they seem to raise many new questions. And the new research on Trachilos’ prints, unfortunately, can’t directly answer those questions.