What We Have In Common With Humans Of 23,000 Years Ago
October 05, 2021 at 05:56AM A version of this article also appeared in the It’s Not Just You newsletter. Sign up to get a new edition from Susanna every Saturday. Recently, researchers reported that they’d found the oldest human footprints in North America. These fossilized tracks were made more than 21,000 years ago in what is now the White Sands National Park in New Mexico. It’s hard to comprehend that span of years and how many generations of humanity have come and gone since then. These were the slighted impressions on the earth—trace markings made by bare human feet pressing into the pliant mud of ancient lake. Yet they survived the Ice Age and everything since to represent people who left hardly any indications that they existed. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] I think about the mountain of documentation we each have of our lives in comparison to those ancient footprints. We’re sure we’ll leave acres of personal history when we go—thousands of photos on dozen...