White Sands discovery
Unfortunately I don't know much more than I've read in the news, though I'm perfectly capable of walking right in to the White Sands ranger's office and asking him what the heck is going on. I'm fairly isolated and though I drove past the place today, twice, it wasn't really a good time to go poking around.But I'll tell you what's public knowledge: Work on footprints found out at White Sands showed that humans had been here 22,000 years ago, as opposed to 13,000 as they had originally determined. The prints were small, as of a child or a small human, and they were supposedly in the park.
Some people from around the country and the world asked me what I knew, but, as I've said, I don't know much more than that. I do plan on asking that ranger, though, because I have a number of questions.
First would be whether it was actually in the park or in the white sands area, which extends beyond the park and includes a number of salty, quicksand-like lakes which would be ideal for preserving footprints. It seems to me that gypsum also (which is what the sand itself is) could sit on top of one of these and there you go, it would be fine for 22,000 years. But again, I really have no idea, and all the article said was in the park.
Second, apparently models of people coming over from Asia now all include a continent called Berengia, and they are pretty sure there was at one time such a thing, and that it played a role in all this traveling. Good, I would say, because I've always had trouble with the idea of primitive people just up and walking as far north as they could, hoping that eventually it would loop them around and bring them south again. I also have trouble with the idea that the idea of boats would never occor to them, nor the ability to construct one from various trees, such that they could survive a week or two in the open water, if not by accident. So I've always been a little skeptical of this "walked over the Bering Strait" idea although I don't doubt that it was more possible back then than it is now.
But no, I have no idea what those prints really showed, or who could have been walking around down here way back then. I'll keep my ears open. My back porch no longer looks out at the white sands, with its gentle sunset and eerie white glow. Now I'm back in the mountains, and only see them on rare occasions when I take my son back to college or pick him up. Maybe those prints were from my own kids, who have been going there since they were small. But 22,000 years would be kind of a time warp, I figure.
posted by tom @ 7:43 PM
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