Footprints discovered in Happisburgh reveal that humans lived in Europe thousands of years earlier than previously thought. Unfortunately, the sea has washed the prints away …
*Name:* Norfolk
*Age:* Inhabited since the ice age.
*Appearance:* Flat. But exciting!
*It is, isn't it?* *The brilliant golden sands of Holkham, the wild, bleak beauty of the salt marshes, the timeless joys of the Norfolk Broads!* *People can be so hillist.* No, I mean the exciting archaeological finds that have just been announced!
*Ooh, what are they? The giant femur of a new kind of dinosaur? A collection of trepanned skulls? A woolly mammoth perfectly preserved under said wild, bleak beauty of the salt marshes?* No – a series of holes!
*I'm sorry, what?* In Happisburgh! The beach has been eroded and at low tide last May, a series of small indentations was revealed. Analysis of scans has since shown that they were probably left by the feet of a family group of homo antecessor 800,000 years ago!
*Footprints?* Yes.
*Not a woolly mammoth, then? Or a new kind of dinosaur. Or any kind of dinosaur. *No. But they are the oldest set of footprints in Europe, and evidence of a human presence here hundreds of thousands of years before we previously thought.
*Oh. Is that important? *"It is one of the most important discoveries, if not the most important discovery, that has been made on Britain's shores," according to Dr Nick Ashton of the British Museum.
*So, can we go and have a look at them and imagine Mr and Mrs Antecessor walking along the shore, shouting at the kids: "Come on, it's bracing!"? *No, you can't. They've been washed away.
*Again – I'm sorry, what?* Footprints, sandy beach, erosion – it happens. But they were scanned and videoed and measured and everything.
*Makes it all a bit blurred pictures of Nessie-ish, doesn't it?* Not at all. It fits perfectly with the nearby discovery in 2010 of stone tools from the same era. It looks like the Antecessor family managed to cross the landbridge that then linked Britain and the rest of Europe and set up home here before being wiped out by climate change.
*I'm off before this becomes a new dodgy Easter Island metaphor.* You come back here! I thought you were meant to be a sapient? Get back here!
*Do say:* "Tell me more."
*Don't say:* "I'd still rather have a new kind of dinosaur." Reported by guardian.co.uk 7 hours ago.
*Name:* Norfolk
*Age:* Inhabited since the ice age.
*Appearance:* Flat. But exciting!
*It is, isn't it?* *The brilliant golden sands of Holkham, the wild, bleak beauty of the salt marshes, the timeless joys of the Norfolk Broads!* *People can be so hillist.* No, I mean the exciting archaeological finds that have just been announced!
*Ooh, what are they? The giant femur of a new kind of dinosaur? A collection of trepanned skulls? A woolly mammoth perfectly preserved under said wild, bleak beauty of the salt marshes?* No – a series of holes!
*I'm sorry, what?* In Happisburgh! The beach has been eroded and at low tide last May, a series of small indentations was revealed. Analysis of scans has since shown that they were probably left by the feet of a family group of homo antecessor 800,000 years ago!
*Footprints?* Yes.
*Not a woolly mammoth, then? Or a new kind of dinosaur. Or any kind of dinosaur. *No. But they are the oldest set of footprints in Europe, and evidence of a human presence here hundreds of thousands of years before we previously thought.
*Oh. Is that important? *"It is one of the most important discoveries, if not the most important discovery, that has been made on Britain's shores," according to Dr Nick Ashton of the British Museum.
*So, can we go and have a look at them and imagine Mr and Mrs Antecessor walking along the shore, shouting at the kids: "Come on, it's bracing!"? *No, you can't. They've been washed away.
*Again – I'm sorry, what?* Footprints, sandy beach, erosion – it happens. But they were scanned and videoed and measured and everything.
*Makes it all a bit blurred pictures of Nessie-ish, doesn't it?* Not at all. It fits perfectly with the nearby discovery in 2010 of stone tools from the same era. It looks like the Antecessor family managed to cross the landbridge that then linked Britain and the rest of Europe and set up home here before being wiped out by climate change.
*I'm off before this becomes a new dodgy Easter Island metaphor.* You come back here! I thought you were meant to be a sapient? Get back here!
*Do say:* "Tell me more."
*Don't say:* "I'd still rather have a new kind of dinosaur." Reported by guardian.co.uk 7 hours ago.
