Turisti ed 'esploratori' ne hanno cancellato la maggior parte.
Ma quelle che restano sono state datate - grazie a due ossa di orso trovate in uno strato inferiore ad esse.
Risalirebbero almeno a 36.500 anni fa (prima si pensava fossero di 10.000/15000 anni fa soltanto) e questo assegnerebbe la palma delle impronte umane più antiche mai documentate e pubblicate fino ad oggi. (si ha notizie di impronte più antiche, ma la mancata pubblicazione non permette a tali reperti di entrare in questa particolare classifica).
Gli scienziati hanno ricostruito così l'evento: sei o sette individui, tra i quali almeno un bambino, sarebbero entrati nella grotta, dopo che un'alluvione ne aveva ricoperto il fondo con un discreto strato di sedimenti sabbiosi fini. Avrebbero calpestato il fango lasciandovi quelle preziose, antichissime impronte umane.
Romanian cave holds oldest human footprints
Human footprints found in Romania’s Ciur-Izbuc Cave represent the oldest such impressions in Europe, and perhaps the world, researchers say.
Human footprints such as this, found in a Romanian cave almost 50 years ago, are much older than originally thought, dating to around 36,500 years ago
[Credit: D. Webb]
About 400 footprints were first discovered in the cave in 1965.
Scientists initially attributed the impressions to a man, woman and child who lived 10,000 to 15,000 years ago.
But radiocarbon measurements of two cave bear bones excavated just below the footprints now indicate that Homo sapiens made these tracks around 36,500 years ago, say anthropologist David Webb of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania and his colleagues.
Analyses of 51 footprints that remain — cave explorers and tourists have destroyed the rest — indicate that six or seven individuals, including at least one child, entered the cave after a flood had coated its floor with sandy mud, the researchers report in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
Published ages for other H. sapiens footprints in Europe and elsewhere go back no more
than 33,000 years.
At a 2011 conference, scientists said that H. sapiens tracks at Tanzania’s Engare Sero site were 120,000 years old.
Those findings have not been published yet, suggesting to Webb a problem with dating or footprint authenticity.
Nearly 1-million-year-old footprints of modern human ancestors were recently documented at a British site.
Author: Bruce Bower
Source: Science News [July 17, 2014]
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