• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

90,000-Year-Old Human Footprints Found In Morocco Are Among World’s Oldest

January 31, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Along the coast of Morocco, archaeologists have uncovered the oldest human footprints ever discovered in Northern Africa and the Southern Mediterranean. Dating to some 90,000 years ago, they are also “among the oldest footprints attributed to Homo sapiens worldwide.” 

An international team of archaeologists recently discovered the footprints near the city of Larache on the Northwest coast of Morocco. While there are older fossilized remains of humans in North Africa at a mountainous site called Jebel Irhoud, no evidence has yet been found in the Larache region, some 250 kilometers (156 miles) north towards the coast.

Advertisement

In total, the researchers counted 85 prints along a beach area that spans around 2,800 square meters (30,000 square feet) in size. Based on the shape, size, and location of the impressions, the team concluded they were made by the feet of Homo sapiens. 

The group was made up of at least five individuals, including a young child, an older child, an adolescent or small adult, a medium-sized adult, and an extremely tall adult. This last individual is believed to have been a male with a height of 189 centimeters (6 feet 2 inches), which is exceptionally tall for a prehistoric human. 

Human Footprints found at Larache in Morroco that date to over 90,000 years old.

Spot the big toe: Footprints found at Larache.

Image credit: M. Sedrati et al, Scientific Reports, 2024 (CC BY 4.0)

Most archaeological sites like this contain less than a few dozen footprints, which makes the 85 impressions at Larache all the more fascinating. To fully appreciate the discovery, you must think about the unique circumstances that allowed a human foot to be imprinted into the ground and then preserved for tens of thousands of years. 

To put a solid date on the tracks, the researchers used optically stimulated luminescence. This cutting-edge technique shows how long ago a grain of sand was exposed to sunlight, thereby showing how long that section of sediment has been buried.

Advertisement

This revealed that the footprints were made approximately 90,300 years ago, with a margin of error of about 7,600 years either way.  

“The Larache footprints represent an important discovery. Indeed, no other site in North Africa has yielded footprints dating from the Pleistocene or Pliocene. They are, therefore, the oldest human footprints in this region and among the oldest footprints attributed to Homo sapiens worldwide,” the study authors write.

The researchers go on to explain that just two other regions have yielded older examples of confirmed Homo sapiens footprints: a set of tracks on the Arabian Peninsula dating to around 120,000 years old and another collection in South Africa that date back a whopping 153,000 years.

Prior to 2000, there were just a handful of sites where you could find ancient human footprints that were more than 50,000 years old, all of which were in East Africa and South Africa. However, excavations in the past two decades have revealed many more footprints older than this time. 

Advertisement

Even in North America, where human presence is relatively recent, archaeologists have recently uncovered human footprints in present-day New Mexico that could be as old as 23,000 years.

The study is published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Soccer – FIFA backs down on threat to fine Premier clubs who play South American players
  2. U.S. House passes abortion rights bill, outlook poor in Senate
  3. Two children killed in missile strikes on Yemen’s Marib – state news agency
  4. We’ve Breached Six Of The Nine “Planetary Boundaries” For Sustaining Human Civilization

Source Link: 90,000-Year-Old Human Footprints Found In Morocco Are Among World's Oldest

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Why Do Some Toilets Have Two Flush Buttons?
  • 130-Year-Old Butter Additive Discovered In Danish Basement Contains Bacteria From The 1890s
  • Prehistoric Humans Made Necklaces From Marine Mollusk Fossils 20,000 Years Ago
  • Zond 5: In 1968 Two Soviet Steppe Tortoises Beat Humans To Orbiting Around The Moon
  • Why Cats Adapted This Defense Mechanism From Snakes
  • Mother Orca Seen Carrying Dead Calf Once Again On Washington Coast
  • A Busy Spider Season Is Brewing: Why This Fall Could See A Boom Of Arachnid Activity
  • What Alternatives Are There To The Big Bang Model?
  • Magnetic Flip Seen Around First Photographed Black Hole Pushes “Models To The Limit”
  • Something Out Of Nothing: New Approach Mimics Matter Creation Using Superfluid Helium
  • Surströmming: Why Sweden’s Stinky Fermented Fish Smells So Bad (But People Still Eat It)
  • First-Ever Recording Of Black Hole Recoil Captured During Merger – And You Can Listen To It
  • The Moon Is Moving Away From Earth At A Rate Of About 3.8 Centimeters Per Year. Will It Ever Drift Apart?
  • As Solar Storm Hits Earth NASA Finds “The Sun Is Slowly Waking Up”
  • Plate Tectonics And CO2 On Planets Suggest Alien Civilizations “Are Probably Pretty Rare”
  • How To Watch The “Awkward” Partial Solar Eclipse This Weekend
  • World’s Oldest Pots: 20,000-Year-Old Vessels May Have Been Used For Cooking Clams Or Brewing Beer
  • “The Body Is Slowly And Continuously Heated”: 14,000-Year-Old Smoked Mummies Are World’s Oldest
  • Pizza Slices, Polaroid Pictures, And Over 300 Hats: What’s Left Behind In Yellowstone’s Hydrothermal Areas?
  • The Mathematical Paradox That Lets You Create Something From Nothing
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version