Human Ancestor Footprints Show Upright Walk

Evolutionists have long held that man evolved from primates, this new finding of two sets of footprints in Kenya may help support their cause. These footprints are not the oldest set found belonging to humans. In 1978 a group of researchers discovered footprints dated back 3.7 million years.

The archaeological find researchers say, look like footprints that could be left in the wet sand by anyone on the beach today. Only these footprints are 1.5 million years old. Scientists say the footprints show a human ancestor that walked the way we do with anatomically modern feet.

These remains were discovered in sedimentary rock near Ileret just off northern Kenya. In the journal Science, a team of international scientists wrote that the footprints were probably left by the human ancestor Homo Erectus, also known as Homo Ergaster.

Actually, a series of footprints were found including one that may have been left by a child. The individuals were walking along a muddy river bank, and scientists have put together a theory as to the height of the walking. They estimated from the stride length that the individuals were about 5-feet-9 inches in height.

"It was kind of creepy excavating these things to see all of a sudden something that looks so dramatically like something that you yourself could have made 20 minutes earlier in some kind of wet sediment just next to the site," archaeologist David Braun of the University of Cape Town in South Africa, one of the researchers, said in a telephone interview.

"These could quite easily have been made on the beach today," Braun added.

According to the description, the footprints showed individuals with a big toe parallel to the other toes, like our feet. Feet that have a human-like arch with short toes necessary for upright walking. Unlike primates whose toes have a grasping design useful in trees. The footprints clearly show size, spacing and depth consistent with modern humans according to the scientists.

Scientists believe Homo sapiens (humans) appeared some 200,000 years ago.

However, with the emergence of these footprints, now researchers believe the first human may have walked upright some 1.5 million years ago and may have co-existed with the dinosaurs. This is a huge scientific finding regarding the evolution of human walking.

The species Homo erectus had a smaller brain than modern people but had generally similar body proportions -- longer legs and shorter arms -- to Homo sapiens. Their remains have been found in Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa, with dates consistent with the newly reported footprints.