A sequence of footprints hidden deep within a long-dried paleo‑lake bed were discovered in 2021 by archaeologists, pushing back the purported arrival of early North American settlers between 23,000 and 21,000 years. A new study, using radiocarbon dating of the footprints in the mud, rather than the earlier seed and pollen dating, has confirmed this astonishing timeline – a good 10,000 years ahead of the mythical Clovis culture's own earliest marked presence in the archaeological record.
Led by Vance Halliday (also a co-author on the earlier 2021 study), once a skeptic, and now a believer, the finds have been published in the latest edition of the journal, Science Advances. He verifies that the mud in the footprints were left behind between 20,700 and 22,400 years ago.
"It's a remarkably consistent record," explains Holliday in a press release, a professor emeritus in the School of Anthropology and Department of Geosciences who has studied the "peopling of the Americas" for nearly 50 years, focusing largely on the Great Plains and the Southwest. "You get to the point where it's really hard to explain all this away. As I say in the paper, it would be serendipity in the extreme to have all these dates giving you a consistent picture that's in error.”
Under the Dunes: A Chance Encounter, A Turn of Fate
The tale starts in 2012, when University of Arizona archaeologist and geologist Vance Holliday accompanied a research team to White Sands. Intrigued by the park's nearby U.S. Army missile range, Holliday saw a chance to gather geological information. Unbeknownst to him at the moment, his work would eventually be responsible for igniting a scientific revolution.
- Short Lived Clovis Tools May Have Killed Off North American Megafauna
- Clovis People Created Seasonal Hunting Camp in Michigan 13,000 Years Ago
By 2019, Bournemouth University and the U.S. National Park Service had revealed intact human footprints in lake-bed sediments. First published in 2021, their work asserted that these prints were between 23,000 and 21,000 years old—long before any known human habitation in the Americas. The finding ignited quick questions—and hot denials—about the dating's accuracy.
Two views of a reassembled beveled bone rod or foreshaft from the East Wenatchee site. (R. Scott Byram, Kent G. Lightfoot, Jun Ueno Sunseri/CC BY 4.0)
Radiocarbon Re-Assessment: Ancient Mud and Its Secrets
Critics had complained about using ancient pollen and seeds to calculate age. Holliday responded by taking a second team back in 2022–23 to collect samples of the ancient mud itself. “Mud never lies,” he jokes, referring to its integrity in radiocarbon analysis. Through an independent laboratory, his team dated the lake mud as between 20,700 and 22,400 years old—firmly within the same period as the previous dates.
This new research is the third line of evidence—and third laboratory—to converge on a similar date range! As Holliday states:
It's a remarkably consistent record. It would be serendipity in the extreme to have all these dates giving you a consistent picture that's in error.
If true, these trackways date well before Clovis sites (~13,000 years ago), long believed to have been America’s earliest culture. The White Sands prints—of women, men, and children—are the oldest confidently dated human presence in the Americas.
And what makes it even more interesting: the footprints are there without artifacts. Critics have demanded to know where the tools and huts are. Holliday's answer: these could have been temporary traverses by family groups of hunter-gatherers passing through the area.
Peopling of America through Beringia. (Public domain)
“These people live by their artifacts, and they were a long way from where they can acquire replacement material. They're not just randomly losing artifacts. It’s logical… If you’re passing through, carrying your gear, you’re not leaving it by chance,” explained Halliday.
Simple trackways, he suggests, could have been walked in mere seconds—leaving no debris behind.
Dates, Depths, Dunes
Radiocarbon ages from mud, seeds, and pollen all cluster around the same period. The total now sits at 55 independent dates on multiple materials. These dates put the footprints squarely in the Last Glacial Maximum (or Ice Age), a very cold time with significantly lower sea levels and wildly disparate ecosystems.
Geologically, White Sands used to be a string of lakes supplied by surrounding streams. Footprints of ancient times were trapped in clay, covered up and sealed under layers of gypsum when the lakes dried up. Its extraordinary geology virtually appears to be doing its best to conserve time—until wind erosion in recent millennia hid the footprints beneath tons of moving sands.
"It's a strange feeling when you go out there and look at the footprints and see them in person. You realize that it basically contradicts everything that you've been taught about the peopling of North America”, added Jason Windingstad, a doctoral candidate in environmental science, and Holliday’s co-author on the study.
Even with strengthened dating, some archaeologists are still leery. The fact that no tools or campsites are present hinders the ability to verify whether the footprints are from a transient hunting group or are evidence of extensive settlement.
But absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, Holliday maintains. He points out that brief travel periods—particularly along a lakeshore—may not leave any long-lasting artifacts behind. For highly mobile groups, forgetting something would have been foolish.
Whatever these footprints reveal—whether they are a new window to the human past or a tantalizing puzzle—they definitely shift the paradigm.
- Oldest Weapons Ever Discovered in North America Pre-date Clovis
- New Mexico Mammoth Bones from 37,000 years ago “Upend” Clovis Theory
They challenge the Clovis-first hypothesis and raise the possibility that human migration into the Americas may have happened in pulses tens of thousands of years before. How did they arrive? Which pathways did they take? What cultures existed prior to Clovis?
“When you stand there and see the prints, you understand they undermine everything you've learned. They're not gesture steps—they're a revolution in human arrival history,” Holliday concludes.
At White Sands, someone walked across white clay well before Clovis spearpoints were scratched out of flint.
Top image: Human fossil tracks at White Sands New Mexico Source: US Geological Service/Public domain
By Sahir
