Archaeologists have found an incredible array of ancient human footprints at an Air Force test and training range in Utah.

In the last month, US archaeologists working with the country’s Air Force have found 88 human footprints thought to date back at least 12,000 years.

The prints were found at a site called Trackway, just half a mile from the equally impressive Wishbone Site. In 2016 archeologists discovered a likely 12,300 year-old fire pit, charcoal, charred bird bones, projectile points, stone tool and even tobacco at Wishbone.

In fact, this was the earliest evidence for human use of the substance.

We might not think much of the footprints we leave behind, but they give archaeologists all kinds of information from the types of animals living in an area to the way they walked, jumped and ran.

Although the Utah testing range is now largely arid, it was once a wetland home to a wide range of animals, including megafauna like giant ground sloths. And it was also home to humans.

‘Based on excavations of several prints, we’ve found evidence of adults with children from about 5 to 12 years of age that were leaving bare footprints,’ said Dr Daron Duke, a principal investigator with the Far Western Anthropological Research Group.

‘People appear to have been walking in shallow water, the sand rapidly infilling their print behind them — much as you might experience on a beach — but under the sand was a layer of mud that kept the print intact after infilling,’ he said.

‘We found so much more than we bargained for,’ added Anya Kitterman, Hill Air Force Base’s Cultural Resource Manager.

Although the team hasn’t yet had its research peer-reviewed and published, Duke says archaeologists can estimate the age of the footprints by considering how the landscape itself has changed over time.

There haven’t been the kind of wetland conditions needed to produce tracks like this for at least 10,000 years, he said.

‘Our long-term work on the geochronology of this area suggests these prints are likely more than 12,000 years old,’ he added.

There’s plenty more work to be done to understand the people who left these footprints behind. The team have collected the infill of the prints to look for organic materials that can be radiocarbon dated, for example.

Members of local Native American tribes are being consulted on the footprints, as well as taken to visit the excavation site. The team say it’s vitally important to have indigenous group’s perspectives, as the footprints will have been left by their ancestors.

‘There is an immediate human connection to seeing human footprints,’ Duke said. ‘To see them from a distant past, especially so much different than it looks today, can be impactful. They were very happy to see this, and it was personally rewarding for me to be able to show it to them. We will continue to talk to them about it.’

More footprints…

Meanwhile, British archaeologists have also made impressive footprint finds at White Sands National Park in New Mexico, New Scientist reports.

An astonishing archaeological area, the park is home to the oldest footprints ever found in North America. Tought to date back some 23,000 years, their discovery was announced last year in the journal Science.

Bournemouth University’s Matthew Bennett and colleagues have found footprint evidence of ancient children playing in the muddy remants of a giant ground sloth’s trackway.

Bennett has been working at the site for years, and was first author on last year’s Science study describing 23,000-year old human prints.

He and his team found large, 40cm-long footprints they believe a sloth that stood up to 3m tall left behind as it lumbered through the wetlands.

Around these prints — and around one in particular — are a mess of children’s footprints that deformed what was likely still wet depressions.

Bennett and colleagues’ best explanation is that, 11,500 years ago, relatively fresh sloth prints filled up with water, creating at least one puddle around which three to five children frolicked.

The research has not yet been published, so it hasn’t yet been reviewed by other academics.