Researchers find the oldest human footprints in Germany – knowledge

Lignite was once excavated here, but for archaeologists the Schöningen opencast mine, which has since been shut down, is now a gold mine. As early as the 1990s, scientists found the oldest completely preserved hunting weapons in human history underground: a museum has been dedicated to the so-called Schöningen spears since 2013. In 2017, excavators discovered the almost complete skeleton of a European forest elephant in the same opencast mine, and this find also caused a stir. And now researchers are reporting something amazing again: like them in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews to report, in Schöningen they identified the oldest human footprints ever found in Germany, which are around 300,000 years old. According to the team led by Flavio Altamura from the University of Tübingen and the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment, the footprints come from three individuals of the extinct pre-human species Homo heidelbergensis.

Since 1994, scientists have repeatedly discovered prehistoric footsteps in the mine in what is now Lower Saxony – also because the conditions for fossil footprints are very favorable here. In ancient times there was a lake with muddy banks surrounded by open woodland. If a creature with a certain minimum weight steps into such a moist soil and the imprint is later covered with sediment, the chances are not bad that a footprint will survive the times – provided nobody tramples over it or digs through the terrain with an excavator, for example .

Many details cannot be read from the depressions in the ground

The scientists examined two geological strata in particular, since footprints have been discovered repeatedly since 1994. They measured the depressions and also analyzed the material that had accumulated in them. In the older layer, around 320,000 years old, the researchers recognized traces of large and small hoofed animals, but above all imprints of elephant feet – which does not necessarily mean that elephants lived mainly there. The animals are simply large and heavy, which is a good prerequisite for footprints. In the younger layer, which is dated to be around 300,000 years old, the researchers also identified the footprint of a rhino – it is the first such footprint in Europe that dates from the Pleistocene, the so-called Ice Age. And they found three footprints that match people.

Many details about these cannot be read from the depressions in the ground. The footprints are different sizes and isolated, so they come from three different feet. In size, these belonged to an adult, about 1.5 meters tall, and two smaller, about 1.10 and 1.35 meters tall hominins. The researchers conclude that it must be Homo heidelbergensis not from the special features of the foot shape, but from the dating of the earth layer. It is well known that these primitive people settled in Central Europe at that time. Researchers know from tools such as the Schöningen spears that they also lived on site at that lake.

In fact, the muddy shore of a lake would be an obvious place to hunt. Animals congregate here to drink, and the damp soil is believed to make escape difficult. However, it is unclear whether the originators of the footprints on that lake actually hunted or whether they collected berries, fished, washed themselves or drank water. The fact that two of the footprints came from younger people rather speaks against a hunting trip, the researchers write; rather they suggest a kind of family scene. Strictly speaking, however, it is even unclear whether the three people were traveling together at all.

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