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They were once believed to be the first Americans "You'd have to start fires, you'd have to start rendering the fat." The teenagers could have been helping out by collecting firewood, water or other essentials.Ī stone point made by the Clovis people. The animals "all had to be processed in a short period of time," explained Dr Sally Reynolds, co-author from Bournemouth University. This was known as the buffalo jump and involved driving animals over a shallow cliff edge. The scientists don't know for sure what the teenagers were doing, but it is possible they were helping the adults with a type of hunting custom seen in later Native American cultures. They offer a fascinating window into what life was like for these early occupants of what is now the South West US. This gave the researchers remarkably precise dates for the impressions themselves.īased on their sizes, scientists think the tracks were made mainly by teenagers and younger children travelling back and forth - along with the occasional adult. The research has been published in the journal Science.Įarliest evidence for humans in the AmericasĪ team from the US Geological Survey carried out radiocarbon dating on seeds found in sediment layers above and below where the footprints were found. The footprints were formed in soft mud on the margins of a shallow lake which now forms part of Alkali Flat in White Sands. And it raises the possibility that these earlier populations could have gone extinct. It suggests there could have been great migrations that we know nothing about. The discovery could transform views about when the continent was settled. Now, a team working in New Mexico has found scores of human footprints dated to between 23,000 and 21,000 years old.