I really, really
enjoy working in the southwest and working in the white sands
area in particular has been quite
a remarkable experience for a variety of reasons.
Just traveling out there, it's a beautiful area.
Crossing the dunes to me always remind me of a sea
of whipped cream, and particularly in the mornings
you could see the mountains off to the to the West, lit
up by the morning sun and the white dunes.
It's a real, it's a pleasure.
It's quite
an honor to be allowed to
to work out there.
Ever since I can remember,
I've always
had an interest in the past in some way shape or form,
and my particular interest is the archeology
, the archeological record of the earliest
people in the Americas, but also the geologic context.
And we'd already been doing some work right in the area
that that turned out to be this archeological site.
And so when the tracks were discovered,
that was some of the first evidence of the age
and context of these tracks.
Yeah, Vance, I think the tracks are
probably in this area here.
Yeah, I think you're right,
the stratigraphy is almost identical.
The tracks were found in stream deposits, this this area.
Most of the area was an old lake
but on the on the east side of the basin,
there were freshwater streams coming in off the mountain.
Every time the stream would flood,
it would bury some tracks
and then the people would come
back later and make some more tracks.
And then there would be another flood cycle.
So a couple of
there were a couple of ways
of approaching this one was to document
the tracks that were already exposed, mapping them in
considerable detail, excavating them.
What you tend to see is a discoloration because the
the sediment filling the track well will often be a
slightly different color.
Seeing the footprints,
it was the most amazing thing I think I have ever seen
in my life.
Putting together the idea that people had been there
6 to 8,000 years earlier than had been documented previously.
And this isn't just a stray
tool, a broken piece of rock,
something that might be questionable.
This is actual people's footprints
and footprints from mammoths, giant ground sloths.
Saber tooth cats, direwolves, human beings were there
when all of these humongous animals were walking
this landscape.
My moment of connection
was when I was able to put my barefoot
next to one of the footprints.
And with permission, then I put my foot
on the footprint itself, which fit pretty well.
So about a woman's size eight shoe or a
39 or 38 in European size?
An interesting thing
about this, in my experience in archeology,
is that what you're dealing with are literally moments in time.
If you think about how long it takes
to make a trackway, say across my office
a couple of seconds so you can look at these tracks
and you know,
you're looking at where somebody literally just walked
across the landscape
23,000 years ago in the space of a couple of seconds,
and it's it's it's quite remarkable
when we first saw those.
The peopling of the Americas
is the last great migration in human history.
The dating that we have right now suggests that
these footprints span time
from about 23,000 years ago to about 21,000 years ago,
and that's 10,000 years older
than the oldest well-documented occupation human
occupation of North America, the Clovis people named after
a site well-known site near Clovis, New Mexico.
So it's it's a huge leap
in many ways, a leap in time, a leap of imagination
that we have people living in the Americas
10,000 years earlier than Clovis.
It causes archeologists to stop
and think about what has been the primary paradigm.
The idea that Clovis
were the first people here in North America.
As both an American Indian and an archeologist,
what I've been doing over most of my career
has been acting as a liaison between the two schools
and really trying to bring more American Indian issues,
concerns and voices into the practice of archeology
and to the interpretation of the archeological record.
Whether or not this will
impact American Indian ideas about the history
on the continent, it remains to be seen.
Scientifically, this is further proof that the time depth,
the deep time of American Indian occupation of North America
is there.
This area where the footprints, where the tracks were found
The discovery was made due to wind erosion.
So between the time they first exposed until they're
pretty much gone, it's just a few years.
So this is this is a whole nother issue out there is
how to preserve them, how to interpret them.
We know that there are more
discoveries to be found.
Every time we look, we find something new.
I went into archeology
to try to understand about people
to try to understand about who they were,
about where they came from. And looking at these footprints
Wander off into the distance took me to that place
in a way that no other discovery has ever made.
White sands has given me the opportunity
to begin to look really deeply into origins
of Native Americans and Native American histories.
The idea that we've added another 8000 years to that deep
history is it makes me smile and think about it.
This is going to be one of those stories
that people will be continuing to discuss.
Hopefully, my name, the names of my fellow
researchers, all of us involved in white sands
will continue to be a part of the footnote of history.