Around 300,000 year ago , a family of former humans visited a lake skirt by open wood . We do n’t know if they came there to drink , swim , or pasturage , but hunt the herds of elephantine beasts found there was likely not on their agenda . Their footprint not only read their bearing , but commit them in an ecosystem we can reconstruct from other clue .
The prints were found at the Schöningen Paleolithic web site in what is now modest Saxony , which was rescued by archaeological team in the nineties from an encroaching coal mine . As a new paper notes , without bones or teeth we can not key out the metal money of the footmark makers with certainty . However , Homo heidelbergensisare known to have lived in Europe up to this time , while the bearing of no other human species has been established in the area at the appropriate time .
Two of the three tracks at the Schöningen web site are from individuals who were not amply grow , suggesting a family chemical group coming to the lake together , and unlikely to be hunting . “ Depending on the time of year , works , fruit , farewell , shoots , and mushroom were usable around the lake . Our findings affirm that the out human specie dwelled on lake or river shore with shallow water . This is also known from other Lower and Middle Pleistocene sites with hominin footprints , ” say Dr Flavio Altamura of the University of Tübingen in astatement .
A distinctively human footprint, presumed to beH. heidelbergensis.Image credit: Senckenberg/University of Tübingen
Oliver Stone tools and horse os carve with sharpened Isidor Feinstein Stone have been found in the same region and see to around the same fourth dimension .
Other step at the land site get fromPalaeoloxodon antiquus , the directly - tusk elephant that grew to twice the size of it of a gigantic or African elephant . They are the most northerlyPalaeoloxodonfootprints ever found , and the first in Germany . We knowPalaeoloxodonwerehunted by Neanderthals . There is no evidenceH.heidelbergensishad the same content , but the paper pop the question an elephant launch nearby had snuff it of natural causes and been scavenged by humans .
“ The elephant track we discovered at Schöningen accomplish an telling length of 55 centimeter [ 22 inch ] . In some cases , we also found wood fragment in the prints that were pushed into the – at that clock time still diffused – soil by the animals , ” explain Dr. Jordi Serangeli “ There is also one path from a rhinoceros – StephanorhinuskirchbergensisorStephanorhinus hemitoechus – which is the first footprint of either of these Pleistocene species ever find in Europe . ”
Fossil elephant track in Schöningen 13 II-2 with wood fragments in the footprint backfill. Much of the area was thoroughly trampled by the giant straight-tusked elephant.Image credit: Senckenberg/University of Tübingen
Not astonishingly , such immense creature left deep print in the soft clay around the lake , and the generator have identify two tramp down installment , interleaved with tenuous peat deposits . They write , “ Animal feet sunk in the peat , reaching or indirectly deforming the muddy substrate . ” Much of the country is so trampled individual step have been lost , but in some case chase clear enough to name the maker survive .
Among these are three sets of tracks whose toe and curving pes identify them as human . One is of an adult , another a juvenile . The third is more ambiguous , and might not have been greet as human without its law of proximity to the other two , but in all probability comes from another untested soul , still some way short of fully grown .
The lakeshore forests were a mix of birch , pine and grassy woodland , allow the mixed ecosystems that accommodate adaptable humans seeking a mixed diet .
This may be hard to distinguish from an elephant print to the layperson, but it is really a rhino print of theStephanorhinusgenus.Image credit: Senckenberg/University of Tübingen
The paper is published in the journalQuarternary Science Reviews .
