Fossil footprints challenge established theories of human evolution Date: August 31, 2017

Well then, when I posted A Eurasian origin for Homo, it was met with an expected wariness by some,

originally posted by: Byrd
a reply to: punkinworks10

The big problem I see here is that there were no anthropoids in the area. No fossil apes near the Balkans.

It's not a likely habitat for apes or hominids, either. I can't see them hotfooting it from the savannahs of Central Africa, over the Ethiopian Mountains to the Balkans without leaving a trail of other remains behind.

And everybody moved on to the endless parade of Atlantis and Flood threads or stupid Egyptian theories as is the want of ATS,

But the Mediterrainian stuns once again.

August 31, 2017
Uppsala University

Newly discovered human-like footprints from Crete may put the established narrative of early human evolution to the test. The footprints are approximately 5.7 million years old and were made at a time when previous research puts our ancestors in Africa -- with ape-like feet.

Whaaaat? Is this Club Med for primates or what?

Ever since the discovery of fossils of Australopithecus in South and East Africa during the middle years of the 20th century, the origin of the human lineage has been thought to lie in Africa. More recent fossil discoveries in the same region, including the iconic 3.7 million year old Laetoli footprints from Tanzania which show human-like feet and upright locomotion, have cemented the idea that hominins (early members of the human lineage) not only originated in Africa but remained isolated there for several million years before dispersing to Europe and Asia. The discovery of approximately 5.7 million year old human-like footprints from Crete, published online this week by an international team of researchers, overthrows this simple picture and suggests a more complex reality.

So, it seems that what I had read all those years ago, was in fact correct, early homonids were present in southern europe as far back as 5.7Mya.
Our feet tell the story

Human feet have a very distinctive shape, different from all other land animals. The combination of a long sole, five short forward-pointing toes without claws, and a hallux ("big toe") that is larger than the other toes, is unique. The feet of our closest relatives, the great apes, look more like a human hand with a thumb-like hallux that sticks out to the side. The Laetoli footprints, thought to have been made by Australopithecus, are quite similar to those of modern humans except that the heel is narrower and the sole lacks a proper arch. By contrast, the 4.4 million year old Ardipithecus ramidus from Ethiopia, the oldest hominin known from reasonably complete fossils, has an ape-like foot. The researchers who described Ardipithecus argued that it is a direct ancestor of later hominins, implying that a human-like foot had not yet evolved at that time.

and

At approximately 5.7 million years, they are younger than the oldest known fossil hominin, Sahelanthropus from Chad, and contemporary with Orrorin from Kenya, but more than a million years older than Ardipithecus ramidus with its ape-like feet. This conflicts with the hypothesis that Ardipithecus is a direct ancestor of later hominins. Furthermore, until this year, all fossil hominins older than 1.8 million years (the age of early Homo fossils from Georgia) came from Africa, leading most researchers to conclude that this was where the group evolved. However, the Trachilos footprints are securely dated using a combination of foraminifera (marine microfossils) from over- and underlying beds, plus the fact that they lie just below a very distinctive sedimentary rock formed when the Mediterranean sea briefly dried out, 5.6 millon years ago. By curious coincidence, earlier this year, another group of researchers reinterpreted the fragmentary 7.2 million year old primate Graecopithecus from Greece and Bulgaria as a hominin. Graecopithecus is only known from teeth and jaws.

So, at the time this homonid was walking around crete, with their undeniably human feet, ape feet were still the rule of the day in africa, and we have an even older homonid, Greacopithecus, even deeper in eurasia, almost 2 million years earlier.

'This discovery challenges the established narrative of early human evolution head-on and is likely to generate a lot of debate. Whether the human origins research community will accept fossil footprints as conclusive evidence of the presence of hominins in the Miocene of Crete remains to be seen,' says Per Ahlberg.

Fossil footprints challenge established theories of human evolution

a reply to: punkinworks10

Even if they had fossil feet in the foot prints, they aren't able to accurately date those either, for the tissue has long been replaced by minerals. Not only, but foot prints are laid down in presumably soft wet mud, and that is comprised of you guessed it, minerals.

Dating material around footprints isn't a sciene, more a guessing game.

So the prints 'lookalike' humanoid and are 'sortof' dateable.

The evolv-ists love to run with stuff like that.

a reply to: punkinworks10

Nice OP. Fact is no one knows. It is all guessing.

Academia have become rigid in their thoughts which tends to lead over looking evidence because it doesn't fit their theory.

Yeah, well ... the more I look into old "heretical" finds that were cast aside because they were "impossible" the more it looks like our standard evolutionary models are in error and modern enough humans might be far, far older than thought.

I really dislike that this subject gets mixed up with dogma from young Earth creationists, Krishna followers, new agers and even people shielding themselves with the mantle of "science"... it should be a bit more objective ... but the finds stand alone and the dogma is on the people trying to put the artifacts in context.

Interesting thread, Punkin ... interesting find. Interesting timelines.

I've never "bought" the whole out of africa theory and agree with Punkinworks10. Everything has to start somewhere and the Out of Africa was just a starting point. It's only natural theories get revised as new evidence comes to light.

Despite the geological processes on the African Continent it was relatively untrammeled by human activity like the Mediterranean areas and Europe. We don't know what's been destroyed, or remains to be found because for years the Out of Africa brainwashing was pretty complete. As the old guard passes I think we're going to be heartily surprised at what's been overlooked or not yet discovered.

a reply to: intrptr

Dating material around footprints isn't a sciene, more a guessing game.

So the prints 'lookalike' humanoid and are 'sortof' dateable.

No, actually dating stratified minerology is fairley well described and settled science.

I guess you missed this part

However, the Trachilos footprints are securely dated using a combination of foraminifera (marine microfossils) from over- and underlying beds, plus the fact that they lie just below a very distinctive sedimentary rock formed when the Mediterranean sea briefly dried out, 5.6 millon years ago.

Fossil plankton are an accepted diagnostic tool to derive ages of sediments.

So the prints 'lookalike' humanoid and are 'sortof' dateable

No the prints are undeniably human, we have the ball on the foot and a big toe apes do not.

and you missed this as well

This is especially true of the toes. The big toe is similar to our own in shape, size and position; it is also associated with a distinct 'ball' on the sole, which is never present in apes. The sole of the foot is proportionately shorter than in the Laetoli prints, but it has the same general form. In short, the shape of the Trachilos prints indicates unambiguously that they belong to an early hominin, somewhat more primitive than the Laetoli trackmaker.

a reply to: punkinworks10

Excellent thread! I gave you a S&F for your great effort. These findings really make alot of people rethink things.

I can't recall which forum was used but this was posted to ATS yesterday. Hopefully our great mods will leave this up regardless.

a reply to: intrptr

Carbon dating definitely has some flaws!

a reply to: punkinworks10

It makes me wonder if a million years ago there was a advanced human civilization.

In the Halo Forerunner book series, humanity used to have a space faring civilization millions of years ago before the Forerunners (An advanced alien space faring civilization) bombed them back to stone age and erased all evidence of this civilization.

Picture is disappointingly vague.
Any close ups of these tracks anywhere?
I found this picture

Source: www.sci-news.com...

They appear hominid but are very unnatural in their straddle or distance between prints oblique to the line of travel.
Try standing with your feet in that position, well over a foot apart - you have to squat to do it.
Probably not an upright species altogether based only on what I can see here.

I think nothing on this earth brings me more joy then the "geniuses" being "idiots". They all claim like religion that they know better then us. Yet time and time again life proves them wrong. Looking forward to the day we consider Albert to be more average of thought then the genius we knew him as.

a reply to: punkinworks10

So much for getting a buck or two out of those old usless text books eh .

a reply to: Asktheanimals

Im not so sure this is the case (over a foot part for their stance)

The scale in the pic shows 5 cm and I doubt you can fit that 5cm scale 4 times over between the feet. Meaning its a max of 20 cm apart which is only 8 inches, and thats on the high side.

Other than that, its anyones guess.

originally posted by: ConscienceZombie
I think nothing on this earth brings me more joy then the "geniuses" being "idiots". They all claim like religion that they know better then us. Yet time and time again life proves them wrong. Looking forward to the day we consider Albert to be more average of thought then the genius we knew him as.

Einstein? It certainly is interesting that his theories might now be on shaky ground. But academia will gladly suffer death before the possibility of admitting they are wrong. It will be interesting to see how the electric universe theory progresses over the next several years. The theory of gravity itself may soon join antiquated history.

a reply to: six67seven

I did search and rescue mantracking and I can assure you those are strange tracks.
Human tracks when walking form a wavy line along the direction of travel.
Notice how both prints seem oriented straight ahead, put your feet in that relationship and you have to waddle to create a similar pattern.

originally posted by: Asktheanimals
Picture is disappointingly vague.
Any close ups of these tracks anywhere?
I found this picture

Source: www.sci-news.com...

They appear hominid but are very unnatural in their straddle or distance between prints oblique to the line of travel.
Try standing with your feet in that position, well over a foot apart - you have to squat to do it.
Probably not an upright species altogether based only on what I can see here.

According to the footnote beneath that photo you shared, it states that they believe it was a good example of a 'static stance' in the foot prints. When I read that, it means those prints were made when the individual stopped and stood /crouched? in this position for a time before traveling on.

a reply to: punkinworks10

No the prints are undeniably human,

I didn't see any closeup of that you describe, just the image in the link of a dried mudflat, showing some 'tracks'.

Let me decide if they are human, show them close up.

And indeed if they are human, then they were human back then too.

Just like sharks were sharks, alligators were alligators, and ants were ants. As far back as 'hundreds of millions" of years...

Caption below photo in link:

The footprints were discovered by Gerard Gierlinski (1st author of the study) by chance when he was on holiday on Crete in 2002. Gierlinski, a paleontologist at the Polish Geological Institute specialized in footprints, identified the footprints as mammal but did not interpret them further at the time. In 2010 he returned to the site together with Grzegorz Niedzwiedzki (2nd author), a Polish paleontologist now at Uppsala University, to study the footprints in detail. Together they came to the conclusion that the footprints were made by hominins.

(emphasis added)

Pretty hard to miss that distinction , then or now.

a reply to: intrptr

Check out the close up pic link provided from sci-news.com up above by another poster. The pic shows a more in depth humanoid print, possibly in static stance.

a reply to: CynConcepts

Thank you, I did. Don't know abut "stances" the caption below that image reads:

“Paleoanthropologists who described Ardipithecus argued that it is a direct ancestor of later hominins, implying that a human-like foot had not yet evolved at that time.”

So again, not human. Kind of sketchy anyway. Under the right 'mud ' conditions, many critter feet can appear stretched due to momentum from walking.

But convenient to say, they aren't around anymore, so this is all we have to go on...

(falls face down in mud)

originally posted by: 3daysgone



In response to academia presenting new evidence which may fundamentally alter their theories, you write...

Academia have become rigid in their thoughts which tends to lead over looking evidence because it doesn't fit their theory.

My take is that tin foil hat wearers have become so rigid which leads them to ignore any evidence that doesn't fit their theories that academics are rigid in their theories!