Walking the Line Between ‘Paleo-Poetry’ and Evidenced Fact
October 27, 2020 7:12 AM Subscribe
What could make you walk miles across a landscape full of Ice Age predators, all alone except for the toddler you’re carrying? Archaeologists recently discovered a long trail of footprints left behind by someone brave enough—or desperate enough—to undertake the journey. A typical teenager’s stroll: Carrying a baby and dodging mammoths [Ars Technica]
Skyrim mashed up against Death Stranding.
posted by glonous keming at 8:56 AM on October 27, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by glonous keming at 8:56 AM on October 27, 2020 [5 favorites]
The paleo-poetry is evocative and irresistible, though.
posted by Orlop at 10:09 AM on October 27, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by Orlop at 10:09 AM on October 27, 2020 [3 favorites]
This made me feel so lonely and sad. Beautiful that we can know about it though. I wish we could conjure up the whole scene and circumstance.
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:33 AM on October 27, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:33 AM on October 27, 2020 [4 favorites]
The appeal of this stems from seeing some among our distant ancestors, long since dust, having inadvertently preserved something quotidian that we can totally relate to. Many or most of us have carried a toddler someplace and had to pause for a moment to shift our small passenger to the other arm. And it can go a lot further back than the dozen or millennia here. Some 250 times as far back as these are the footprints of three hominids at Laetoli preserved in what was damp sand. They may have travelled minutes or hours apart, but as they are in three sizes, the smallest considerably tinier than the other two, it is tempting to see them as a paired couple and a child, all travelling together. Two sets go in an uninterrupted straight line. The third, the medium-sized one, does not.
Mary Leakey said of the footprints at Laetoli, "At one point, and you need not be an expert tracker to discern this, she stops, pauses, turns to the left to glance at some possible threat or irregularity, and then continues to the north. This motion, so intensely human, transcends time. Three million six hundred thousand years ago, a remote ancestor—just as you or I—experienced a moment of doubt."
posted by ricochet biscuit at 11:21 AM on October 27, 2020 [16 favorites]
Mary Leakey said of the footprints at Laetoli, "At one point, and you need not be an expert tracker to discern this, she stops, pauses, turns to the left to glance at some possible threat or irregularity, and then continues to the north. This motion, so intensely human, transcends time. Three million six hundred thousand years ago, a remote ancestor—just as you or I—experienced a moment of doubt."
posted by ricochet biscuit at 11:21 AM on October 27, 2020 [16 favorites]
It seems most likely that the person was trying to reach another family or group, and they clearly knew where to go, but we don’t know why. Perhaps the child needed medical care or food that weren’t available elsewhere, or perhaps the teenager’s own group had experienced a disaster of some kind.
Probably escaping from Numenorean slave-raiders.
posted by The Tensor at 12:35 PM on October 27, 2020 [4 favorites]
Probably escaping from Numenorean slave-raiders.
posted by The Tensor at 12:35 PM on October 27, 2020 [4 favorites]
find the line between ‘paleo-poetry’ and evidenced factWhat we know from the infant footprints is that baby shoes were never used.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 6:11 PM on October 27, 2020 [2 favorites]
I love this kind of thing too. It is amazing and profoundly moving to take the paleo-poetry to heart, even if conditionally.
What I don't understand is how, for 10,000 years, the footprints can stay right at the surface of the land -- without erosion or being buried by sedimentation. Or by being eroded in some places, while being buried in other places.
I don't have access to the original article, which might explain these issues, but the photos shown here have the footprints right at the surface, with no excavation of surrounded material to find them. Remarkable? Sure, I can see how this happens when footprints have solidified into stone, and layers above get washed off to bring the entire track to the surface, but are the White Sands salt flats really that tough?
OK, again I don't have access, but I found an article on typical sedimentation rates and it says they are quite commonly in the range of 0.01 to 0.1 g / cm^2 / yr. The lower limit would then give 10 g / cm^2 on top of the original footprints. 1 g of water is 1 cc, and presumably dirt is lighter than water, so we would expect the footprints to be covered by at least 10 cm of dirt over 10,000 years.
There must be some special circumstances here. Or else, this not being my area, I could be way off base in my assumptions. Anyone know better?
posted by brambleboy at 1:52 PM on October 28, 2020
What I don't understand is how, for 10,000 years, the footprints can stay right at the surface of the land -- without erosion or being buried by sedimentation. Or by being eroded in some places, while being buried in other places.
I don't have access to the original article, which might explain these issues, but the photos shown here have the footprints right at the surface, with no excavation of surrounded material to find them. Remarkable? Sure, I can see how this happens when footprints have solidified into stone, and layers above get washed off to bring the entire track to the surface, but are the White Sands salt flats really that tough?
OK, again I don't have access, but I found an article on typical sedimentation rates and it says they are quite commonly in the range of 0.01 to 0.1 g / cm^2 / yr. The lower limit would then give 10 g / cm^2 on top of the original footprints. 1 g of water is 1 cc, and presumably dirt is lighter than water, so we would expect the footprints to be covered by at least 10 cm of dirt over 10,000 years.
There must be some special circumstances here. Or else, this not being my area, I could be way off base in my assumptions. Anyone know better?
posted by brambleboy at 1:52 PM on October 28, 2020
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posted by wotsac at 7:32 AM on October 27, 2020 [7 favorites]