Oldest Evidence of Homo Sapien Footprints found in Saudi Arabian Ancient Lake
A team of researchers from Saudi Arabia, Australia, and the United Kingdom discovered 7 prehistoric footprints in 2017 which could be between 115,000 and 120,000 years old in the Nefud Desert in north-central Saudi Arabia. Four of the seven footprints are believed to be two Homo Sapiens that traveled together to the ancient water hole to drink since no tools were found nearby. The research scientists believe that the footprints are evidence that Homo Sapiens left Africa several thousand years earlier than the previously determined 60,000 years.
The footprints were found along with 369 animal tracks and 233 fossils of ancient elephants, camels, buffalo, and ancestors of the modern horse. The paleoenvironment was like a present-day African savanna with lots of water resources and open grasslands. This ancient waterhole called Alathar “the trace” in Arabic was a popular place for animals and hominins to quench their thirsts.
Ancient Infant DNA shows a probable link to the Origin of Native Americans
In 2013, Dr. Ben A.Potter and his students from the University of Alaska Fairbanks discovered the remains of two human infants at the Upward Sun River in interior Alaska. Potter’s team expected the DNA they took from the infants to match that of the other northern Native American populations they had been working on for over a decade. A surprise occurred when the 6-week old infant, named Sunrise Girl-Child (Xach’itee’aanenh T’eede Gaay by the local indigenous community) lived about 11,500 years ago. She existed at the end of the last glacial period when there existed a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska called Beringia in which her ancestors crossed into North America.
Sunrise-Girl Child’s DNA analysis in 2018 demonstrated that a single ancestral Native American group split from the East Asians group around 35,000 years ago. Then about 20,000 years ago, this group split again into two populations —one being the Ancient Beringians and the other became the ancestors of all Native Americans.
