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Footprints in the sands of time

January 27, 2006

20,000-year-old Aboriginal footprintAn archaeologist from The University of New England has described his involvement in the discovery of hundreds of human footprints, roughly 20,000 years old, in Mungo National Park in western NSW. The footprints are the oldest to be found in Australia, and the largest collection of their type in the world.

Dr Richard Robins, an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Human and Environmental Sciences at UNE, was one of three authors of a paper describing the footprints, soon to be published in the Journal of Human Evolution. The other authors were Professor Steve Webb from Bond University and Dr Matthew L. Cupper from Melbourne University. Their paper describes more than 124 footprints left by children, teenagers and adults as they ran across a moist clay pan at the height of the last glaciation.

One very tall man, whose height Dr Robins and his colleagues have estimated at around 194cm (6'4”), appears to have been running at about 20kmh. Had he lived today, this prehistoric sprinter would have worn size 13 joggers. So clear are his footprints that it is possible to see where mud oozed between his toes, and where his heel slipped on the surface.

The footprints were discovered in 2003 by Mary Pappin Jr, a local Aboriginal woman, during a site inspection with local Aboriginal people and Professor Webb. Dr Robins said that “initially there was some skepticism about the find, and I was called in by Professor Webb to contribute to the investigation”.

He said visiting the site for the first time was an “incredible” experience.

“The footprints been described to me, but when I actually saw them I was a bit awestruck. It's remarkable to have a record of human occupation that is so old and so well preserved,” he said.

“The find is significant in several ways. Firstly it's a unique record of the types of activity carried out by people around the height of the last glaciation, and the results of their actions. Mostly we have to rely on stone artifacts to tell us about how people lived at that time. This find therefore compliments that knowledge in a very important way.

“Also, it gives us an idea of what sort of impact climate was having on these people. The environment was very dry at that time and the system of lakes that supported them was beginning to dry out. These footprints give us a glimpse of how they were adapting to those changes.”

The footprints were preserved in a layer of calcious clay, which was “just about the right consistency” for recording imprints. According to Dr Robins, they were then covered over by sand dunes for about 19,000 years, before the sands shifted, revealing them in all their glory.

Since the initial discovery of 89 footprints a further 400 have been found, covering an area of approximately 700 square meters. And there is more work to be done – Dr Robins estimates that only as little as one-third of the total site has been uncovered so far.

Dr Robins family has had a “long association” with UNE, beginning with his Uncle, who graduated in science when UNE was still a University College, through his mother, who was the Map Room Librarian at the university when he was a child, to his son, a recent Ph.D. graduate in Physiology. He graduated from UNE with a Bachelor of Arts in 1974 and went on to become Curator of Archaeology at the Queensland Museum, a position he held for 17 years. He currently lives in Queensland, where he operates a cultural heritage consultancy.

Posted by Leon Braun at January 27, 2006 04:24 PM