Fossilized Footprints Found in New Mexico Track Traveler With Toddler in Tow

A small woman—or perhaps an adolescent boy—walks quickly across a landscape where giant beasts roam. The person holds a toddler on their hip, and their feet slip in the mud as they hurry along for nearly a mile, perhaps delivering the child to a safe destination before returning home alone.

Despite the fact that this journey took place more than 10,000 years ago, a new paper published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews manages to sketch out what it might have looked and felt like in remarkable detail.

Evidence of the journey comes from fossilized footprints and other evidence discovered in New Mexico’s White Sands National Park in 2018, reports Albuquerque TV station KRQE.

Toward the end of the late Pleistocene epoch—between 11,550 and 13,000 years ago—humans and animals left hundreds of thousands of tracks in the mud along the shore of what was once Lake Otero.

The new paper investigates one specific set of tracks, noting details in the footprints’ shapes that reveal how the traveler’s weight shifted as they moved the child from one hip to the other.

“We can see the evidence of the carry in the shape of the tracks,” write study co-authors Matthew Robert Bennett and Sally Christine Reynolds, both of Bournemouth University in England, for the Conversation.

“They are broader due to the load, more varied in morphology often with a characteristic ‘banana shape’–something that is caused by outward rotation of the foot.”

At some points along the journey, the toddler’s footprints appear as well, most likely because the walker set the child down to rest or adjust their position. For most of the trip, the older caretaker carried the child at a speed of around 3.8 miles per hour—an impressive pace considering the muddy conditions.

“Each track tells a story: a slip here, a stretch there to avoid a puddle,” explain Bennett and Reynolds. “The ground was wet and slick with mud and they were walking at speed, which would have been exhausting.”

On the return trip, the adult or adolescent followed the same course in reverse, this time without the child. The researchers theorize that this reflects a social network in which the person knew that they were carrying the child to a safe destination.

“Was the child sick?” they ask. “Or was it being returned to its mother? Did a rainstorm quickly come in catching a mother and child off guard? We have no way of knowing and it is easy to give way to speculation for which we have little evidence.”

The fossilized footprints show that at least two large animals crossed the human tracks between the outbound and return trips. Prints left by a sloth suggest the animal was aware of the humans who had passed the same way before it.

As the sloth approached the trackway, it reared up on its hind legs to sniff for danger before moving forward. A mammoth who also walked across the tracks, meanwhile, shows no sign of having noticed the humans’ presence.

White Sands National Park contains the largest collection of Ice Age human and animal tracks in the world. As Alamogordo Daily News reports, scientists first found fossilized footprints at the park more than 60 years ago. But researchers only started examining the tracks intensively in the past decade, when the threat of erosion became readily apparent.

The international team of scientists behind the new paper has found evidence of numerous kinds of human and animal activity. Tracks testify to children playing in puddles formed by giant sloth tracks and jumping between mammoth tracks, as well as offering signs of human hunting practices.

Researchers and National Park Service officials say the newest findings are remarkable partly for the way they allow modern humans to relate to their ancient forebears.

“I am so pleased to highlight this wonderful story that crosses millennia,” says Marie Sauter, superintendent of White Sands National Park, in a statement. “Seeing a child’s footprints thousands of years old reminds us why taking care of these special places is so important.”

Oldest And Largest Pre-Maya Sacred Site Discovered In Mexico

The largest and oldest monumental pre-Maya structure has been identified in Mexico revealing an ancient culture that thrived without a centralized government or elite classes.

A team of archaeologists conducting airborne LIDAR surveys in Tabasco, Mexico, created a high resolution 3D map of “Aguada Fénix,” thought of as being no more than a natural rise in the landscape, but they revealed a massive elevated ancient platform.

Measuring 4,635 feet (1,413 meters) north to south and 1,310 feet (399 meters) on its east to west axis, the ritual site is raised 32-50 feet (10-15 meters) above the surrounding area and the scans also plotted no less than nine sacred causeways extending from the structure.

And perhaps equally, if not more provocative than the structure itself is that the archaeologists didn’t find a single jot of evidence of any social elites or central government controlling the construction project.

Dating The Gargantuan Sacred Site

This incredible discovery is detailed a new science paper published in the journal Nature, by lead author Takeshi Inomata from the University of Arizona , who speaks with Ancient Origins later in this article.

Professor Inomata’s team of researchers radiocarbon dated 69 charcoal samples and determined that the earliest deposits at Aguada Fénix dated to around 750 BC and it was also discovered that people of this region began using ceramics by 1200 BC, which is almost two centuries earlier than ceramic use at comparative sites, like for example, “Ceibal, Tikal, Cahal, Pech, Cuello and other Maya communities,” according to the paper.

The ceramics found at Aguada Fénix resemble the Real ceramics from Ceibal and they are markedly different from those of the La Venta or the Grijalva River region, and while it is still unknown if the builders of Aguada Fénix spoke the Mayan language, the researchers say they appear to have had “closer cultural affinities with the Maya lowlands than with the Olmec area”.

A Vast And Deeply Ancient Sacred Platform

Artificial plateaus, or platforms, are horizontally expansive monumental structures where agri-rituals were performed in accordance with the annual cycles of the Sun, Moon and stars, thus, they doubled as astronomical observatories for taking measurements from a fixed base.

Aligned with the cardinal points of the compass, and generally associated with Earth and fertility deities, platforms contrast with vertically aligned structures like standing stones and pyramids which focus on the sky and its deities.

Construction of this newly discovered ceremonial platform was conducted over a natural rise of bedrock in an ambitious project that began around 1000 BC and ceased soon after 800 BC, which the paper explains is before the initial construction of the ceremonial complex at Ceibal.

Auger tests were conducted in the main and west plateaus at Aguada Fénix which allowed the researchers to estimate construction volumes, which for the main plateau was “3,499,563–4,702,537 yards (3,200,000–4,300,000 meters)” requiring “10,000,000–13,000,000 person-days”.

In conclusion the researchers say the various radiocarbon dating results lead them to estimate the structure had been built between 1000 and 800 BC, which makes it the “ oldest monumental structure found in the Maya area so far”.

All Change, As Historical Assumptions Collapse

These new discoveries have tipped everything on its head, as until today, archaeologists had incorrectly thought that the Maya civilization had emerged from small villages during the Middle Pre-classic period (1000–350 BC), but the discovery of Aguada Fénix directly challenges this now old school model.

And what is perhaps most surprising is that the research at Aguada Fénix found “no clear indicators of marked social inequality, such as sculptures of high-status individuals” leading the archaeologists to conclude that ceremonial complexes such as Aguada Fénix, “suggest the importance of communal work in the initial development of the Maya civilization”.

The main ritual stage, or platform, at Aguada Fénix, is the largest construction in the pre-Hispanic Maya area and while the volume of the plateau at the Olmec site, San Lorenzo is larger, Aguada Fénix represents the largest construction effort during the Middle Pre-classic and Late–Terminal Pre-classic periods.

And if the archaeologists interpretations are correct, the implication is that the Gulf Coast Olmec region was not the only center of rapid cultural development and that cultural and technological innovations, like architecture and building, didn’t always cone from the top, elites, downwards.

The Inside Story With Professor Takeshi Inomata

Several big questions arise from this new study and perhaps the most pressing is what inspired a group of hunters to all of a sudden build one of the largest religious structures in the region’s history? Seeking answers, I contacted lead author Takeshi Inomata, who explained that between 1000-1200 BC most people in the Maya area relied heavily on hunting and fishing along with a small-scale maize cultivation, and that they did not use ceramics.

Around 1000 BC they started to use ceramics and began developing sedentary settlements and the professor thinks that as the people increased their maize agriculture they had to “negotiate new concepts of use or owner rights of lands and properties”.

And it was at this moment that the large collaborative construction project gave a new group identity to an emerging agricultural community being “a monument for everybody” compared with later large Maya buildings used mainly by rulers and elites.

My second question to the scientist related to his not finding any evidence of social elites, and if this was the case, who then organized the workers and controlled selection and assembly of building materials, transportation of materials to the site, feeding and clothing the builders, and who said “put that stone there, and not there”?

Dr. Takeshi said in an email to Ancient Origins that traditionally archaeologists thought that “communities developed social inequality, and then elite, rulers, or other powerful people organize large construction projects”. But contrary to this, all evidence gathered at Aguada Fénix shows that the large construction was done “in the absence of powerful elite”.

While leaders would have played central roles in planning and organizing such work, the main factor was people ’s voluntary participation in the construction which tells us “the potential of human collaboration which does not necessarily require a centralized government”. However, such a construction project possibly promoted the centralization of government and social hierarchy.

ARCHAEOLOGISTS DISCOVER ANCIENT OCHRE MINE THAT UNLOCKS THE LIVES OF EARLY AMERICANS

A team from CINDAQ had been exploring a cave system in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, navigating several kilometres of underwater passages when they came across features within the subterranean landscape that had been unnaturally altered.

They conducted nearly 100 expeditions and collected samples, captured more than 20,000 photographs and gathered hours of 360-degree video footage to enable researchers to study the unnatural formations and archaeological remains in situ.

The CINDAQ divers brought the discovery to the attention of Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) as well as the experts from academia to fully understand its significance.

Researchers have determined that the cave system was inhabited from between 12,000-10,000 years ago, predating the rise of Maya culture and was occupied for around 2,000 years.

During this period, the cave was mined for ochre, a natural clay earth pigment which is a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand often used in rock paintings, mortuary practices, painted objects, and for personal adornment.

Remains of ochre extraction beds and pits have been identified, along with digging tools, navigational markers, and fire pits. In some parts of the cave complex, the cave ceiling is still visibly blackened by what appears to be soot caused by small fires.

Eduard Reinhardt from the School Of Geography & Earth Sciences at McMaster University said: “Most evidence of ancient mining on the surface has been altered through natural and human processes, obscuring the record.

These underwater caves are a time capsule. With all the tools left as they were 10,000 – 12,000 years ago, it represents a unique learning opportunity. It took advanced expertise to work in the caves recovering ochre, so we know it was very valuable for the earliest peoples of the Americas.”

Brandi MacDonald from the Archaeometry Laboratory at the University of Missouri said: “What is remarkable is not only the preservation of the mining activity, but also the age and duration of it.

We rarely, if ever, get to observe such clear evidence of ochre pigment mining of Paleoindian age in North America, so to get to explore and interpret this is an incredible opportunity for us. Our study reinforces the notion that ochre has long been an important material throughout human history.”

Archaeologists Discover Ancient Ochre Mine That Unlocks The Lives Of Early AMERICANS

The underwater caves along Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula contain within them a sprawling labyrinth of archaeological relics perhaps unlike anywhere else on Earth.

Preserved in a vast network of flooded caverns, these inundated cenotes hold a treasure trove of Maya secrets – but as a new discovery shows, you can also find ancient artefacts dating back to much more distant episodes of prehistory.

In a new study, researchers report the finding of what could be the oldest known mine in the Americas (alongside other claims to the title), uncovering the remains of a subterranean ochre mine dating back to 12,000 years ago.

“The underwater caves are like a time capsule,” says expert diver and micropalaeontologist Ed Reinhardt from McMaster University in Canada.

“There is clear evidence of ochre mining which would have taken place thousands of years ago.”

In dives during 2022, Reinhardt and fellow researchers explored caves along the eastern coastline of Quintana Roo. Caves in this region have long been known to contain the skeletal remains of ancient peoples who inhabited the caverns thousands of years ago, back when lower sea levels meant the caves were dry and accessible.

As to why ancient individuals would enter these deep and dangerous labyrinthine passages has remained unclear, but now we appear to have an explanation.

“The cave’s landscape has been noticeably altered, which leads us to believe that prehistoric humans extracted tonnes of ochre from it, maybe having to light fire pits to illuminate the space,” says diver and archaeologist Fred Devos from the Research Centre of the Quintana Roo Aquifer System (CINDAQ) in Mexico.

Inside the caves, the team found a range of evidence of prehistoric mining activities, including digging tools, ochre extraction beds, navigational markers, and ancient fireplaces.

The researchers suggest mining evidence in three submerged cave systems spans about 2,000 years of operation – from 12,000 to 10,000 years ago.

The sites, called La Mina, Camilo Mina, and Monkey Dust, may be the oldest known examples of ochre mining in the Americas, but the team thinks cave exploration and ochre mining in the region may date back even further, based on other skeletal evidence dated to 12,800 years ago.

For some reason, the miners in this site stopped their ochre extraction about 10,000 years ago. As to why, the researchers are unsure, as the cave would still have been accessible at that point.

It’s possible, they say, that the miners moved on to other deposits in other caves – and with 2,000 kilometres of known cave systems to explore in the region, we might find more evidence of this ancient mining in the future.

What is certain is that it must have taken unimaginable bravery to delve for hundreds of metres into these jagged caves, with only a lit torch to shine a path in the buried darkness.

That they ventured into the dark like this in such conditions tells us something about how important the ochre pigment must have been in ancient Palaeoindian rituals and customs, that they were willing to risk their lives for their prize.

“Imagine a flickering light, in the middle of deep darkness,” says team member James Chatters from Applied Paleoscience in Washington State, “that at once illuminates the red-stained hands of the miners as they strike the ground with hammers made out of stalagmites, while it lights the way for those who carry the ochre through the tunnels until they reach sunlight and the forest floor.”

A 500-Year-Old Aztec Tower of Human Skulls Is Even More Terrifyingly Humongous Than Previously Thought, Archaeologists Find

Archaeologists excavating a famed Aztec “tower of skulls” in Mexico City have uncovered a new section featuring 119 human skulls. The find brings the total number of skulls featured in the late 15th-century structure, known as Huey Tzompantli, to more than 600, reports Hollie Silverman for CNN.

The tower, first discovered five years ago by archaeologists with Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), is believed to be one of seven that once stood in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán. It’s located near the ruins of the Templo Mayor, a 14th- and 15th-century religious center dedicated to the war god Huitzilopochtli and the rain god Tlaloc.

Found in the eastern section of the tower, the new skulls include at least three children’s craniums. Archaeologists identified the remains based on their size and the development of their teeth.

Researchers had previously thought that the skulls in the structure belonged to defeated male warriors, but recent analysis suggests that some belonged to women and children, as Reuters reported in 2022.

“Although we cannot determine how many of these individuals were warriors, perhaps some were captives destined for sacrificial ceremonies,” says archaeologist Barrera Rodríguez in an INAH statement. “We do know that they were all made sacred, that is, they were turned into gifts for the gods or even personifications of the deities themselves, for which they were dressed and treated as such.”

As J. Weston Phippen wrote for the Atlantic in 2022, the Aztecs displayed victims’ skulls in smaller racks around Tenochtitlán before transferring them to the larger Huey Tzompantli structure. Bonded together with lime, the bones were organized into a “large inner-circle that raise[d] and widen[ed] in a succession of rings.”

While the tower may seem grisly to modern eyes, INAH notes that Mesoamericans viewed the ritual sacrifice that produced it as a means of keeping the gods alive and preventing the destruction of the universe.

“This vision, incomprehensible to our belief system, makes the Huey Tzompantli a building of life rather than death,” the statement says.

Archaeologists say the tower—which measures approximately 16.4 feet in diameter—was built in three stages, likely dating to the time of the Tlatoani Ahuízotl government, between 1486 and 1502.

Ahuízotl, the eighth king of the Aztecs, led the empire in conquering parts of modern-day Guatemala, as well as areas along the Gulf of Mexico. During his reign, the Aztecs’ territory reached its largest size yet, with Tenochtitlán also growing significantly. Ahuízotl built the great temple of Malinalco, added a new aqueduct to serve the city and instituted a strong bureaucracy.

describe the sacrifice of as many as 20,000 prisoners of war during the dedication of the new temple in 1487, though that number is disputed.

Spanish conquistadors Hernán Cortés, Bernal Díaz del Castillo and Andrés de Tapia described the Aztecs’ skull racks in writings about their conquest of the region.

As J. Francisco De Anda Corral reported for El Economista in 2022, de Tapia said the Aztecs placed tens of thousands of skulls “on a very large theater made of lime and stone, and on the steps of it were many heads of the dead stuck in the lime with the teeth facing outward.”

Per the statement, Spanish invaders and their Indigenous allies destroyed parts of the towers when they occupied Tenochtitlán in the 1500s, scattering the structures’ fragments across the area.

Researchers first discovered the macabre monument in 2015, when they were restoring a building constructed on the site of the Aztec capital, according to BBC News.

The cylindrical rack of skulls is located near the Metropolitan Cathedral, which was built over the ruins of the Templo Mayor between the 16th and 19th centuries.

“At every step, the Templo Mayor continues to surprise us,” says Mexican Culture Minister Alejandra Frausto in the statement. “The Huey Tzompantli is, without a doubt, one of the most impressive archaeological finds in our country in recent years.”

Ancient Mayan Palace Containing Human Remains Uncovered In Mexico’s Yucatán Jungle

It’s 180 feet long, more than 1,000 years old, and might just be one of the most striking finds in all of Mayan archaeology.

The Mayans built one of the most storied civilizations in history, with their remarkable architecture and craftsmanship remaining incredible to this day. And now, researchers have found one of the most stunning examples of that craftsmanship in recent memory.

Archaeologists in Mexico just found remnants of a Mayan palace that is more than 1,000 years old in an ancient city west of Cancún.

Found in Kulubá, the palace is part of a vast complex that also includes an altar, a large round oven, two residential rooms — and human remains from a burial site. The impressive building stands 19 feet high, is 49 feet wide, and extends for 180 feet.

The find was announced by Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History on Dec.

Lead archaeologist Alfredo Barrera Rubio believes the palace was used during two eras of the Mayan civilization — the late classical period between 600 and 900 A.D. and the terminal classical between 850 and 1050 A.D. But there’s still much left to uncover.

“We know very little about the architectural characteristics of this region, the north-east of Yucatán,” he said. “So one of our main objectives, as well as the protection and restoration of cultural heritage, is the study of the architecture of Kulubá. This is just the start of the work.”

“We are only just uncovering one of the largest structures on the site.”

Experts are currently hoping that forensic analysis of the unearthed human remains will yield data that could contextualize these discoveries even further. They hope to determine the sex, age, pathologies, and dietary habits of Kulubá’s Mayan inhabitants.

Meanwhile, the researchers will look to learn more about the structure itself. For now, experts are confident that this palace was used by both priests and government officials during the two aforementioned eras. And they’ve made at least one fascinating conclusion: The building was made to resemble a giant snake.

“In its time, the finishes of this temple would have given the impression of being snake scales,” she said. “This is known because the stone reliefs that the property has in its accesses, resemble the jaws of a ‘monster of the earth.’”

Though the site was initially discovered in 1939 by American archaeologist Wyllys Andrews IV, the dense forests in the surrounding area essentially enveloped this historical 234-hectare site ever since its discovery.

Rubio and his team are now finally clearing the way with the Yucatán State Government’s financial support. This includes excavations, conservation work, and topographic mapping of the entire area.

As it stands, researchers have made some remarkable progress on the interior, unearthing stairs, corridors with columns, and other finds that have remained hidden from the world for decades at the least, and centuries at most.

Now that the site has been uncovered in earnest, conservation workers are using the surrounding environment to protect the structure.

“One option that this site gives us is to use the vegetation to help conservation; reforesting specific parts with trees to protect the structures, especially painted sections of the site, from direct light and wind,” said conservation worker Natalia Hernández Tangarife.

If researchers can keep the site viable and protected for long enough, who knows what else they might uncover about the Mayans’ fascinating past.

1,600-Year-Old Elongated Skull with Stone-Encrusted Teeth Found in Mexico Ruins

Archaeologists in Mexico have recently uncovered a 1,600-year-old skeleton of a woman who had mineral-encrusted teeth and an intentionally elongated skull – evidence that suggests she was part of her society’s upper-class.

While it isn’t uncommon for archaeologists to find deformed remains, the new skeleton is one of the most “extreme” ever recorded.

“Her cranium was elongated by being compressed in a ‘very extreme’ manner, a technique commonly used in the southern part of Mesoamerica, not the central region where she was found,” the team said, according to an AFP report.

The team, led by researchers from the National Anthropology and History Institute in Mexico, found the woman in the ancient ruins of Teotihuacan – a pre-Hispanic civilisation that once lied 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of Mexico City, existing between the 1st and 8th century AD before it mysteriously vanished.

The woman, who the researchers have named The Woman of Tlailotlacan after the location she was found inside the ancient city, not only had an elongated skull, but she had her top two teeth encrusted with pyrite stones – a mineral that looks like gold at first glance.

She also had a fake lower tooth made from serpentine – a feature so distinctive, the team says it’s evidence to suggest that she was a foreigner to the ancient city.

The researchers doesn’t give any details into how these body modifications were performed 1,600-years-ago, or why they were common in the first place. But based on other cultures, such as the Mayans, artificial cranial deformation was likely done in infancy using bindings to grow the skull outwards, possibly to signal social status.

While very little is none about the woman’s faux-golden grill, researchers from Mexico did find 2,500-year-old Native American remains with gems embedded in their teeth back in 2009. In that study, the team said that sophisticated dental practices made the modifications possible, though they were likely used purely for decoration and weren’t symbols of class. 

“It’s possible some type of [herb based] anaesthetic was applied prior to drilling to blunt any pain,” team member José Concepción Jiménez, from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, told National Geographic.

It’s also important to note that the current team’s findings have yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, so we will have to take their word on it for now until they can get their report ready for publication.

The Mexican team aren’t the only ones to discover some interesting human remains lately, either. Back in June, researchers from Australia uncovered 700,000-year-old ‘hobbit’ remains on an island in Indonesia.

More recently, just last week, researchers in China what might be a skull bone belonging to Buddha inside a 1,000-year-old shrine in Nanjing, China.

Needless to say, archaeologists all over the world have been quite busy this year, and we can’t wait to see what they uncover next.