Oldest Human Footprints

3.6-million-year-old early human footprints discovered in Tanzania.

16:19 23 January 2017

Researchers from Italy and Tanzania have discovered footprints belonging to Australopithecus afarensis, our distant relatives that lived 3.6 million years ago. The tracks are the oldest prints of their kind ever found and were made when early humans walked together across wet volcanic ash.

 

The varying sizes of the footprints suggest that they were made by a male walking with smaller females.

 

Lead researcher Prof Giorgio Manzi, director of the archaeological project in Tanzania, said: "The footprints of one of the new individuals are astonishingly larger than anyone else's in the group, suggesting that he was a large male member of the species."

 

"In fact, the 165cm stature indicated by his footprints makes him the largest Australopithecus specimen identified to date."

 

Researchers believe that the newly discovered tracks could belong to the same tracks found in Laetoli, Tanzania 40 years ago giving clues to the lifestyle of Australopithecus. This suggests that walking on two legs was picked up early in the human lineage and that males may have had more than one sexual partner. 

 

Dr Marco Cherin, director of the school of paleoanthropology at the University of Perugia, said: "A tentative conclusion is that the group consisted of one male, two or three females, and one or two juveniles,"