2 million year old foot print found in egypt

reply to post by Rasobasi420


To my own statement, I found this info

www.ajaonline.org...

R Donnell [2004] reconstructed the environmental conditions that early hominids might have encountered,when they migrated from Africa to Eurasia.
From 2.0-1.5Ma there were no desert barriers in north Africa and SW Asia.
Grasslands were extensive.

So it does seem that this would be the expected time to find fossilized footprints in this area. Probably not human, but hominid to be sure.

Recent studies suggest that hominids may have migrated to western Europe circa 1.3Ma or "possibly" earlier.
New palaeomagnetic results from th Barranco de Orce region of SE Spain indicates that the Barranco Leon 5,Venta Micena and Fuentenueva 3 sites were occupied within a period of reverse polarity.Excavations yielded fragmentary hominid remains and litihic artifacts with evidence of anthropic action.The presence of a reverse directed magnetism throughout the Barranco de Orce section implies that deposition occurred during the Matuyama reversed magnetochron,[L Gilbert,2006].

So if migration into Europe happened about 1.5Ma, then we shouldn't be surprised that there were footprints found 2Ma in Egypt.

What I can't quite get my head around is... At what point does a hominid cease being a hominid and starts to be considered a human? I'm talking about the (as near as dammit) precise moment.

Evolution says that a species will gradually evolve into another using it's ability to adapt (survival of the fittest) to gradually 'evolve' into it's latest incarnation.

What development, or mutation turned a hominid into a human?... Was it a gradual thing, and if so at what point in that gradual development lies the dividing line between species?... If it was a rapid (one or two generation) mutation, what was it?... and when?

These questions are one reason why (when applied to humans) I view natural evolution with some suspicion. Before anyone says anything though, I really don't believe in the 'religious' answer either... ie. Intelligent design based on events as told in the bible.

I wonder if this footprint discovery might help shed some light on these questions

Originally posted by Quantum_Squirrel


lets focus on the footprint and speculate...

the footprint is wildly speculated to be 2 million years old...
by Hawass himself. A deliberately exaggerated date to get press coverage.

Hawass, has bundled the Legacy of Ripley and of P.T. Barnum
into his own personna.

the footprint find, 'coincidently' comes at the same time that Hawass
is launching a 'prehistoric monuments' department at his Antiquities
Museum. (see the article link in post by sy.gunson)

Hawass noted that he has recently set up a department for the prehistoric monuments headed by Khalid Saad, which is currently working on recording .archaeological sites dating back to prehistory.
www.almasry-alyoum.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=72704
~see photo image of footprint~

Hawass is touting this footprint, in the hopes that modern Egypt
will get hype as the oldest proven enclave of humans,
and the tourists will flock to his museum, preferably on scheduled tour buses...

showman, huckster, weaver of wonderous tales, promoter extrodinaire'
for the mysterious Egyptian Antiquities....
truely in a class by himself!

reply to post by Dagar


I think it's brain size. Cranial capacity. Hominids were walking erect for a million years before Lucy got herself fossilized. I thank that supreme event - walking erect - is dated around 4 million years ag0.

As for the number I offered - 75,000 years ago - for modern humans, I had Cro Magnon in mind. I have also seen 35,000 years ago. Lower European cave art is dated that far back. Or further. And in Palestine (and France) they - Cro Magnon - were contemporary with the Neanderthals. Some Englanders think today's French may be the last living descendants of the Neanderthals?

I get the shivers every time I see that picture of the artist’s HAND in the Lascaux cave. Exactly like my hand but his art is several orders of magnitude ahead of mine.

See www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/09/030923065212.htm
And www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-09/uow-bff092203.php

[edit on 8/22/2007 by donwhite]

Originally posted by astmonster
ERRRRRRRRR.....

How old is a Hammer you buy in the store?

The day you buy it?
The day it was forged?
The day the steel was melted?
The day the Iron Ore was taken out of the ground?
The day the Iron Ore was formed?

The 'HAMMER' is as old as when it was first put together and became a Hammer...

the steel in it is a totaly different thing its a lump of steel... and so on and so forth.


ST. UDIO....

Hawass is touting this footprint, in the hopes that modern Egypt will get hype as the oldest proven enclave of humans,
and the tourists will flock to his museum, preferably on scheduled tour buses...

i too had this suspicion when i first read these articles could be a tourism hype (like i believe the latest Mexico ufo sightings are just that) thing or attempting to gain more funding for something however it could also be a 2 million year old foot print .. i'm open to all posibilities


[edit on 22/8/07 by Quantum_Squirrel]

reply to post by St Udio


For me, it is impossible to denigrate ancient Egypt. Their civilization lasted more than 3,000 years. If you stop counting at Cleopatra’s death. Our judicial system originated in Egypt. There is a beautiful transcript of a trial of a grave robber around 1,500 BCE. They had due process then. Amazing.

I think our religion (Christianity) originated there too. Everybody wanted to be connected to Egypt as we can see in the story of the Exodus. To be associated with Egypt was a claim for greatness. Even to be a "slave" of Egypt was special. Most scholars agree the pyramids were built by local conscript labor during the off planting seasons. But can you imagine the power of the claim to have built the greatest buildings on Earth? A tale too good not to tell!

[edit on 8/22/2007 by donwhite]

Answering a bunch of points.

No, the material won't be "carbon dated." It will be dated by other methods. (sorry... this one makes me go "Arrgh!" Every time a scientist talks about dating something, someone hops up with "carbon dating" and then hauls out the old arguments about it from 1950.) The stony bed where the prints are found will be dated by other methods.

Lucy isn't a chimpanzee. Yes, I know that Jack Chick claims this as fact, but Jack Chick can't tell a chimp skeleton from a human skeleton. Lucy is clearly human.

She hasn't been ruled out as a non-direct ancestor yet -- the jawbone is still under discussion.

The "human and dinosaur tracks" are of two types... the faked ones (like the Paluxy Man Tracks (the sculptor later confessed) and the misinterpreted ones (two sets of dino prints ... but on the badly eroded sections you can pretend that a badly eroded theropod track is actually human. If you follow the WHOLE trackway you come to sections where the footprints are clearer, and they're definately dinosaur.)

Originally posted by Dagar
What I can't quite get my head around is... At what point does a hominid cease being a hominid and starts to be considered a human? I'm talking about the (as near as dammit) precise moment.

That depends on who you're talking to. Scientists use "hominid" to indicate "humans and their human-like cousins (like Neanderthals)". Most consider this group to be humans, but in talking to the press, things get ... changed (sigh) because the reporter may not understand the issue well.

Hominids include some non-human things like Procounsul (which is the earliest hominid, if memory serves.) After Procounsul, almost everything looks pretty much like us. You could dress Australopithecus in a shorts and tennis shoes and blouse, send her off to the hairdresser's and put a bit of makeup on her, and you wouldn't think she looked that odd (you'd notice something off about the proportions and think maybe she had some sort of deformity but you'd recognize her as human.)

What development, or mutation turned a hominid into a human?... Was it a gradual thing, and if so at what point in that gradual development lies the dividing line between species?... If it was a rapid (one or two generation) mutation, what was it?... and when?

Bipedalism. And there's not enough material to fix the date, but it's about 3 million years ago. It may have been fairly rapid, since we don't see a lot of the "knuckle walking" structures in Lucy's wrists and hands ... and her proportions (the bones) show that she couldn't have walked on all fours.

I wonder if this footprint discovery might help shed some light on these questions

There's a number of interesting questions that this material raises, but scientists are waiting to see the initial reports and to examine the tracks for themselves. This will be the earliest evidence of bipedalism, so the gait and footprint impressions are of critical interest to everybody.

Originally posted by St Udio
the footprint is wildly speculated to be 2 million years old...
by Hawass himself. A deliberately exaggerated date to get press coverage.

I don't think he's exaggerated -- and there's evidence that the date is reasonably correct. If he exaggerates, he gets savaged by his peers... and there are many out there who would.

the footprint find, 'coincidently' comes at the same time that Hawass
is launching a 'prehistoric monuments' department at his Antiquities
Museum. (see the article link in post by sy.gunson)

Acutally, Egypt has NEEDED one of those for the past 100 years. Everyone's focused on the Pharonic Egypt and often to the detriment of other pre-dynastic material.

Hawass is touting this footprint, in the hopes that modern Egypt
will get hype as the oldest proven enclave of humans,
and the tourists will flock to his museum, preferably on scheduled tour buses...

There's lots of older material around. Yes, it will be a tourist attraction, but hardly competes in age with the Dikka child and others (3.3 million years old) Ethiopia's place as the site of the oldest hominid fossils is still secure.

Let me untangle something here, if I may?

Originally posted by donwhite
As for the number I offered - 75,000 years ago - for modern humans, I had Cro Magnon in mind.

Cro Magnon is only an area... the specimins are homo sapiens sapiens -- modern humans. The actual date is debateable, but 75k years is an upper limit, yes.

I have also seen 35,000 years ago. Lower European cave art is dated that far back.

That's the upper limit of it, yes.

And in Palestine (and France) they - Cro Magnon - were contemporary with the Neanderthals.

They were completely contemporary with the Neanderthals and homo Heidelbergensis and a number of other humans. There's some slight indication of crossbreeding... but....

Some Englanders think today's French may be the last living descendants of the Neanderthals?

None of the scientists do. I think this was intended originally as a slur and was an urban legend created in America shortly after 9-11.

I get the shivers every time I see that picture of the artist’s HAND in the Lascaux cave. Exactly like my hand but his art is several orders of magnitude ahead of mine.

He or she was homo sapiens sapiens... just like you and Leonardo da Vinci.

Originally posted by sy.gunson
Ha ha this is so funny.

The Bible suggests that Adam and eve lived only a little over 4,000 years ago.

The Mitochondrial Eve theory based on DNA holds that we all had a common ancestor. The Mitochondrial_Eve is suggested to have lived anywhere between 385,000 years ago and 140,000 years ago depending whose theory you listen to.

Even worse, Mitochondrial Adam is suggested to have only turned up 60,000 years ago... Hey one up for the femminists (alternately Nature could have decided to replace women as a failed experiment ha ha)

I know that fossil remains have pushed back early humans to at least one million years ago.

The real interesting footprints come from a river somewhere in USA, where a layer was exposed revealing human footprints and dinasour footprints in the same geological stratum...

Explain that one ?

Well, Im not too rleigious, but there are parts in the bible, where God is mocking (yes, mocking) Isaac or someone and is asking him questions to which he already knows the answer. two of thos questions go something like this:
"Can you pierce the skin of the behemouth with your spears?"
"Can you catch the "insert wierd name" with your nets?"

and both of the names, behemouth and other one, are supposed to be dinasours, which suggests that man did at one time live with dinasours. I could look it up for you, but if you look up behemouth in the back of the bible it should direct you to the page.

But yeah, im not that religous anymore, i just remember that from when i was.

but on another note... how can a footprint last two million years? i mean.. man isnt dinasour, we dont create a ton of force on the earth on inpact.

but on another note... how can a footprint last two million years? i mean.. man isnt dinasour, we dont create a ton of force on the earth on inpact.

Thats it in lamen terms i assume its the same for all footprints its like a mould of the footprint but a rock mould

I Love to see discoveries like this, the main thing for me is that, I can never buy into the mainstream theories of the history of man or even some of the religious balony or literal spontaneous appearance of humans, nor agree with the generally very short established and accepted timelines modern man has existed compared to other species.

IMHO you have to think of the way man has adapted and evolved into the atmosphere of the earth, adapted skin, bodily and other internal chemical processes that revolve around the sun and the immediate earths environment, light etc, utilize H20, metabolism to thrive and function, then reproduce, these are things that in a species from the time it shows up, develops into a complex being like humans or even many other equally or less complex species, this takes hundreds of thousands of years, maybe millions or so(unless there has been some sort of hybridization or interference to bring about this species from a more superior species) I would not be surprised this could be true, and if so our historical records beyond modern times and written history are limited to theoreticals, some scientific methods and speculation to either make a sound case to prove or disprove the age of man on earth.

[edit on 22-8-2007 by phinubian]

reply to post by Odessy


It was true that until the 18th century - Age of Enlightenment - almost all Westerners believed the Holy Bible was divinely inspired and every word was literal and true etc. Not very many people believe that today. The animals you refer to are the behemoth and Leviathan. It is more likely the behemoth was an elephant and the leviathan was a hippopotamus. Even GOD did not know about dinosaurs!

We know the KT Boundary event ended the Age of Dinosaurs. That was about 65 mya. Million years ago. That gap in the flora and fauna allowed for the advent of the mammals. Out of which lengthy line of evolving we are now standing here discussing when it all happened. Anyone who claims to have evidence or proof of a dinosaur and human walking together is either immensely dumb or a fraud. cf. the Piltdown Man.

It is worth noting that while we say with confidence the mitochondria DNA shows we all share one mother, EVE, about 15,000 generations ago but because we cannot reliably fix the length of a “generation” there is a fairly wide range in the number of years quoted. This does not mean there was just ONE woman, but rather, there may have been several 100 mothers and perhaps even a few 1000. But all the other mother’s lines of descent have dead-ended. Men OTOH, tending to be promiscuous if not philanderers, have given us serval fathers over the ages. I.e., EVE might have had 10-20-30 children, many by different men.

[edit on 8/22/2007 by donwhite]

Originally posted by Byrd

Originally posted by St Udio
the footprint is wildly speculated to be 2 million years old...
by Hawass himself. A deliberately exaggerated date to get press coverage.

I don't think he's exaggerated -- and there's evidence that the date is reasonably correct. If he exaggerates, he gets savaged by his peers... and there are many out there who would.

Ah ha, trying to mitigate the damage, huh

well, in the court of public opinion, it must be brought up that the good Dr.
in the 'Reuters' article claims...it could be 2 million years old

but in another report @ 'www.almasry-alyoum.com' ..the good Dr. tells us;
If it is proven that the footprints date one million years back, they may be the
"oldest archaeological site on earth, which shows that man in Egypt preceded in any other parts of the world" Hawass said,


so, which claim is reasonable and to held up to peer review??

the 2 million year date or the 1 million year date??
to my view, one or the other ?estimate?/reasonable guess?
will tend to nullify the other incorrect date.

again, i say the man is just promoting his pet project of Egyptian Antiquity,
just as one should expect from any Camber-of-Commerce spokesperson,
just because he has academic credentials does not mean every utterance from his lips is to be taken as a disciplined, thought out, commentary.

this footprint announcement is a promotion rather than a scientific exercise.
but when the dating results come back in a month, we'll see his new spinn
on the development.


(P.S.- i'm still awaiting the pyramid 'doors' issue to get resolved or addressed)


thanks,