Prehistoric human footprints and Creationism

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

5 June 2010

Scientists have found in 2003 in Mexico human footprints in a layer of ash. It sparked a lot of discussion as to the dating of these footprints and recently a reverse has been proposed: the footprints are not footprints at all. The footprints were dated several ten thousands of years ago but when other studies were conducted by evolutionists, they dated it much earlier, somewhat 1.3 million years ago.

In USA Today, Dan Vergano discussed the find as follows:

“Hiking on the dried bed of Mexico's Valsequillo Lake in the  summer of 2003, an archeology team made a discovery they suspected would open a new  chapter in the debate [on who colonized Americas first]. Crisscrossing the lakebed, they saw tracks, an ash field littered with hundreds of impressions that resembled footprints from adults and children, ‘ along with birds, cats,  dogs and species with cloven feet,’ as Nature magazine later reported. The team led by  geoarchaeologist Silvia Gonzalez of the United Kingdom's Liverpool John Moores University, suspected the track's makers had fled an ancient eruption of the looming Cerro Toluquilla volcano, leaving their tracks in the now-famous ‘Xalnene Ash.’”

Then came the dating. For a Seventh Day Adventist as Creationist believing in a six day literal creation week of 24 hours per day with a seventh day Sabbath on which God rested as example to humanity, the tracks cannot be earlier than 2521 BCE which is the biblical chronological date of the Flood of Noah that destroyed the dinosaurs and all written records before that date. Linguistics, history, economics, culture investigations, archaeological seriations, all started at this date. There cannot be any prehistoric, building, living, staying, dwelling, laboring before this date. The water destruction was global creating the Grand Canyon as we know it today and every single geological phenomenon all over the world.

Vergano continued his report:

”In 2005, Gonzalez and colleagues announced at the UK's  Royal Society's Summer Science Exhibition that "optical stimulated luminescence" results,  where ash from the site was baked and then examined for the kind of light it emits as a  signal to the last time it melted, gave a result of 40,000 years ago. ‘Accounting for the origin of these footprints would require a complete rethink on the timing, route and origin of the first colonisation of the Americas,’ said a Royal Society statement announcing the find. People only emigrated to the America's about 13,000 years ago, suggests the conventional picture painted by archaeological records. These ‘ Clovis’  people, named for the New Mexico town where the oldest dated site for their distinctive  tools ands arrowheads were discovered, populated the continent in as little as two centuries  after crossing the Bering Strait. A handful of sites, notably a suspected hearth in Chile's Monte Verde ruins suggest some people arrived a bit earlier, perhaps 15,000 years ago. But 40,000-year-old footprints in Mexico would suggest that prehistoric modern humans, who are thought to have left Africa as recently 60,000 years ago, raced across Asia and colonized the New World remarkably fast.”

Despite the uncertainty by the initial report as to the dating of the colonization of Americas whether 13000, 15000, or 40000 years ago, the point well taken here, is that there was a migration from somewhere to Americas in distant past. Of course, for Adventists that date had to be any time after 2521 BCE. That is the biblical reality and since science lacks proper chronology (murky dating methods), therefore, the biblical chronology is closer to the reality of the situation. It is the best norm for science.

The evidence of Gonzalez was challenged in the same year in 2005 as reported by Vergano:

“A debate erupted. In December of 2005, a team led by geochronologist Paul Renne of the  University of California, Berkeley, reported in Nature that the trackway ash layer dated to 1.3 million years ago, according to analysis of radioactive Argon elements in the rock.”

Since Renne is so certain that they date to 1.3 million years ago, his conventional scientific seriation does not allow for humanids to exist that early, thus what did Renne do? He threw out the baby with the water. Said Vergano:

“If  the ash dated to 1.3 million years, that meant the footprints in it couldn't have been made  by modern humans, who have only been around for about 200,000 years, tops, as indicated  by bones and tools. ‘I never thought they were tracks,’ Renne says now. ‘I've seen them and they really don't have the left-and-right pattern of footsteps. They only look like tracks if you see them in the right light.’ Quarry marks and recent foot traffic from people who today live nearby more likely explained the impressions, Renne and others suggested.”

A number of scientific papers were produced on the topic some supporting the 1.3 million dating and others suggesting it to be later. Finally, Gonzalez accepted the 1.3 million years dating and what evolutionists are hoping, is that he will also throw out his conclusions that the footprints were not humans, nor cats and dogs and birds and split hoofed animals but just markings giving that impression. Said Vergano:

“A number of papers flew back and forth, some supporting the Argon results and one confirming the younger luminescence date. But in the latest turn, the Journal of Human Evolution paper led by Darren Mark of the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre, and co-authored by Gonzalez, concedes the fight, replicating the Argon results from Renne's lab. ‘Dr. Gonzalez and colleagues from Liverpool John Moores University have accepted that the age of the Xalnene Ash is approximately 1.3 (million years),’ Mark says, by e-mail. He adds the finding, ‘casts considerable doubt on the interpretation that the markings in the Xalnene Ash are hominid footprints.’”

Seventh Day Adventists agree with Paul Renne’s criticism that humanids did not exist 1.3 million years ago. God did not created them yet since they were only created about 6140 years ago. None of us were there to judge the footprints at close range for ourselves, but we have to admit that the photo provided by Dan Vergano, does look suspicious with the bulldozer marks adjacent to these so-called human prints. On the other hand, there must have been hundreds of photos taken that have led these scholars to identify it as human, cats, dogs, cleft hoofed animals and birds.  The volcano did not leave a sticker saying, “Eruption in 2200 BCE”. The eruption could have been any time after 2521 BCE, biblical time, and any time before a 1000 BCE. Who knows?  If the disaster of the Flood occurred in 2521 BCE, any dating of geology, fossils, trees will be disturbed due to the post-disaster climate change of those days. Measuring with consistency or uniformatism as principle in the scientific measuring process for that early, is thus futile.

Dan Vergano wrote his article to pronounce that the footprints are not footprints and that science has falsified the claims that they are prehistoric footprints.  

The respondent to Vergano, Mark made some comments as to the possibility of humanids living 1.3 million years ago:

"Considering what we know about the timings of hominid migrations out of Africa up into Europe and Asia, it is highly improbable that hominids could have made it to the America's by 1.3 million years before present."

Seventh Day Adventists fully agree with Mark. For the same reasons they agree with Renne. Our question is whether we  should throw out the human footprints or whether we should throw out the dating. For now the dating goes. As to the veracity of the human footprints, more study and photos are needed. The dating can always be accommodated between 2300-500 BCE. Migration theories fit the Ark of Noah situation perfectly. Scholars dating for these phenomena should just be adjusted according to biblical historical reality. Paul Renne is a geochronologist but this researcher [in this writing] is a biblical chronologist and the problem with Renne is that he refuses to let the ancient text tell him anything constructive for his conclusions of his manmade instruments for measuring with preconceived axioms of uniformity and eternal consistency. Renne’s view is thus a minimalist view of reality and not a maximalist view of reality, namely, one that includes both horizontalism [human perspective and insight] and verticalism [God’s revelation to man].

Source:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/vergano/2010-05-16-footprints_N.htm? csp=outbrain&csp=obnetwork

Dan Vergano, “Prehistoric ‘footprints’ falsified by science” USA Today 16 May 2010.

Photo is that presented by Dan Vergano in USA Today. Notice the bulldozer marks next to the human footprints.