Cerro Toluquilla

History

Many prints of step (human and animal) were discovered in summer of 2003, on the floor of an abandoned career close to Cuenca del Valsequillo located at the south of the town of Puebla, by the préhistorienne Silvia Gonzalez (university John Moores, Liverpool, Great Britain), professor David Huddart (university of Liverpool John Moores) and professor Matthew Bennett (university of Bournemouth). At the hour of discovered the team worked to date and trace the geology of the basin of Cuenca del Valsequillo Mexico within the framework of a joint project binational, " Proyecto Arqueológico Hueyatlaco " between the National institute of Anthropology of Mexico (INAH), the universities of Mexico City and Texas. The reason was to go back the discoveries to human remainders found in the volcanic deposits of the Toluquilla.
volcano the fossilized traces of step were discovered in volcanic ash of the site of the volcano Cerro Toluquilla to 130 km in the south-east of Mexico City.

The dating of the prints is estimated at - 38000 years while being based on the found lake sediments with the top of the volcanic layer. The prints, 269, discovered on the site of Hueyatlaco, were preserved in fossil form in the volcanic ash along what was the shore of an ancient volcanic lake. First American went on these shores, by leaving their prints which were covered thereafter by ashes and the sediments with the lake. The traces were submerged and preserved when the level of water is assembled.

In April 2006, a team of archeologists of the British University John Moores of Liverpool, led by Silvia Gonzales, discovered, in the same site of Hueyatlaco of the Cuenca del Valsequillo, of the irrefutable fossilized human remainders. The scientists have just gone back these human bones to… 40000 years.

Dating

The prints of feet were scannées with the laser and were reproduced in images with three dimensions at the University of Bournemouth. Roughly 60% of the prints proved of human origin, and 36% of them were identified like feet of children because of their size. Some prints form tracks in certain parts of the career and one estimates it that the adults were to measure between 117 and 190 centimetres. The scientific team used a certain number of techniques to date the fossilized prints, human bones and the sediments surrounding these fossils, including the dating with uranium. The results indicate a 40.000 years dating for the human bones. The prints of step human and animal preserved in the upper part of ash are older than 40.000 years.

New assumption

It is by analyzing the volcanic rock itself by the method Argon 40 Argon 39 that the scientists arrived to datings going 600.000 years to 1.3 million years. Another method of dating, the paleomagnetism, confirmed this study.

Paul Reindeer Professor de Geologie, Director of the Center of geochronology of the university of Berkeley, declares in the nature magazine which it is impossible that the steps are those of our ancestors. Without proposing alternative it shows the impossibility of a " presence; humaine" at that time in the area. It states however that if the evidence were brought that the traces are of human origin, it would be an archaeological discovery without precedent. It should be noted that at this period Homo sapiens did not exist yet, and that if Homo erectus were spread on planet (in Europe, Africa and Asia), could be on the American continent?

In France, Pascal Picq, paleoanthropologist at the Collège de France and collaborator of professor Yves Coppens, are also divided on the subject, and acknowledge " to have still evil with there croire" but thinks that " it would not be the first time that major upheavals occur in paléonthologie". There are 6 to 7 million years, all the characteristics which one believed clean in the man existed already and belong to a common ancestral luggage.

In waiting of confirmation of these dates, the majority of the specialists prefer to stick to that 40.000 years, which returns its paléoaméricains, contemporaries of those of Pedra Furada (Brazil), of Topper (the United States) and of skeleton of Luzia (Brazil) and of those of Cerca large (Brazil).

Random links: