Scientists Find Earliest Evidence of Human Footprints Outside Africa Which Are Over 800,000 Years Old

The British Museum said that the uncovering of human footprints more than 800,000 years old on Britain's Norfolk coast had been a groundbreaking moment in understanding early human migration outside Africa. The remarkable impressions, found on the storm-battered beach of Happisburgh, were the oldest human footprints ever discovered in Europe, more than doubling the age of previous European finds, stated the BBC.

Their impressions left behind an intimate story of small, early-human ancestors, adult or child, hiking on what during those times most probably was a part of the original Thames estuary. Thus, Dr. Nick Ashton described the finding presented by the British Museum, defining it as an "extraordinarily rare discovery," one that also reshaped considerably how early humans were earlier thought to occupy northern Europe, according to The Guardian. 

These ancient mud prints reveal evidence of at least five individuals, including one man whose feet were the equivalent of a modern size 8 shoe, indicating his height to be about 1.7 meters. The group seemed to stop from time to time, maybe to collect shellfish or plants on the riverbank. They moved across a landscape that would be unrecognizable today—one in which mammoths, hippos, and rhinoceros grazed freely in the river valley.

The climate then was as it is today in Scandinavia, with warm summers and bitter winters. These early humans lived off the abundant produce of the river plain and marshy lakes, but their stay was short-lived. After about 50,000 years, the onset of a worse climate compelled them to move south over the isthmus that joined Britain to mainland Europe. The antediluvian meanderers of the Norfolk countryside were probably Homo antecessor, otherwise referred to as "pioneer man," a species already known from a number of fossils found in Spain, according to NBC News. Certainly, these Norfolk footprints establish them at the most northerly edge of human occupation on the continent, extending the age of human settlement in Britain by as much as 100,000 years. 

For the preservation to have remained for the modern discovery was near miraculous. Storm tides revealed the prints in May 2013, allowing scientists a two-week window to document their findings before the sea would reclaim them, stated BBC. The research team worked frenetically between tides, using photogrammetry to create detailed 3D images by stitching together hundreds of photographs, now the only remaining evidence of this momentous find.

The Happisburgh prints joined other major footprint discoveries around the world, though they are still unique in their northern European location. Although there are older prints, such as the famous 3.6-million-year-old Laetoli Trail of footprints in Tanzania, these British impressions form important evidence of the adaptation of early humans to cold climates, showing their extraordinary resilience and adaptability, as per The Guardian.