NOTE: I saw the following, quietly gripping story on ArtDaily.org this morning and felt compelled to re-post and share it, supplementing it with additional illustrations from other news sources. This is about the closest I'm likely to get to Mexico, a place I love, in the near future (see the many recent "ghastly crimes" news stories and Here for the reason), but once you read this, you'll know why I delved to this news here. Three adults and a child, presumably an ancient cave dwelling family in the Valle de Ahuatos -- amazing.
The cave painting at bottom makes a startling and moving connection. When I first saw it, I thought immediately of the Ten Thirteen Productions voice-over identification that concludes episodes of The X-Files:
"I Made This."
Specialists from INAH discovered in the Tarahumara
Sierra five footprints made by humans some 25,000 years ago. Photo: José
Concepción Jiménez/INAH.
Mexican Archaeologists Find Human Footprints In Chihuahua That May Be 25,000 Years Old
MEXICO CITY.-
Five footprints from human feet, calculated to be between 4,500 and 25,000 years old, were discovered in the Sierra Tarahumara, in Chihuahua. Specialists from Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) said that the foot prints could belong to the first men who lived in this region that is today known as northern Mexico.
These are the first human footprints that have been found in
Chihuahua and once their age has been found out, they will be added to
the few footprints from the first people that lived in the American
continent that are preserved in Mexico, particularly in Cuatro Ciénegas,
Coahuila and in a ranch in Sonora.
Cave wall paintings feature circles and lines. Photo: José Concepción Jiménez/INAH.
The footprints correspond to three adults and a child that probably lived in the caves that are located in the sierra, in the Valle de Ahuatos, eight kilometers from the town of Creel, in Chihuahua.
According to morphoscopic analysis, Footprint 1, by its longitude of
26 centimeters, corresponds to the right foot of a male adult, while
Footprint 2 belongs to the left foot of another adult, but it
being the less defined it has been difficult to identify the sex of the
person that made it. Footprint 3 was made by an infant 3 or 4
years old and corresponds to the right foot with a longitude of 17
centimeters.
Chihuahua footprint and measuring instrument/INAH
Footprints 4 and 5 are from another adult and represent the only pair that corresponds to the same person, which was found two meters away from Footprint 1; the left foot print (Footprint 4) has a longitude of 23.7 centimeters, while the right (Footprint 5) measures 24.5 centimeters. These footprints are significant as they have six toes, which may be due a malformation.
Chihuahua footprints, another view/INAH
Anthropologist José Concepción Jiménez said that the finding of the
human footprints was made by an email that a citizen from Chihuahua sent
to the Seminario del Hombre Temprano in Mexico, telling about the
existence of ancient human fooprints in the Valle de Ahuatos, in the
municipality of Bocoyna.
“We explored the surface to verify the information and we couldn´t
find the footprints, it was very hard to find them because they are not
easy to identify.
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