Talk:Happisburgh footprints

Possibility of expansion
I appreciate that the footprints are a significant find. I wonder, however, if it might be better to combine the other discoveries at Happisburgh into one article about the early habitation of the location? Blue Square Thing (talk) 21:52, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, quite possibly. There certainly should be an article about the Happisburgh arcaheological finds. BabelStone (talk) 22:00, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
 * This is an excellent article. Congratulations to everyone who has worked on it. Perhaps they could work on an article on the Happisburgh finds as a whole, which is very much needed as stated above. I went to a talk by an archaeologist who said that Antecessor was probably right across northern Europe. I asked him why it had only been found at Happisburgh, and he said that further east the layer had long ago eroded, while further west it was still deep underground - an interesting point, if anyone could find a reference for it. Dudley Miles (talk) 11:01, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Fishy
Absolutely no proof, but the whole thing sounds very fishy. One of the most important finds of the century is announced only after it has been "washed away", but we are told the date they were made and the shoe-size of the print-makers.  Tigerboy1966  22:42, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Plenty of photos of them fwiw. Blue Square Thing (talk) 23:29, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Once the soft sediment in which the footprints had been made had been exposed to the open it quickly eroded away, so they were recorded using photogrammetry before this happened. It was only after the photogrammetric recordings were analysed and the paper written that the discovery could be made public. Really nothing suspicious here. BabelStone (talk) 00:07, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Well I suppose that if there's a photograph of it, it must be real.  Tigerboy1966  01:25, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

I too think it's suspicious. I would not be surprised to find out it's a hoax in the future. Allen649 (talk) 04:05, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Im surprised there hasnt been commentary about its being potentially fraudulent, or at least misread. This is a really big deal, and we dont have any physical evidence, now, to examine. Mercurywoodrose (talk) 05:32, 9 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Just to point out that I don't think it's a hoax, I just think that the claims made about the discovery are being accepted rather too easily. The reports come from a "publish first, judge later" platform which most Wikipedians would treat v carefully as it look like a repository of what we would call WP:OR. This is not Science or Nature we are talking about here. Being asked to believe that the date of the earliest human footprint in Britain is being pushed back from 4,800 BCE to 850,000 BCE requires a higher standard of proof than "trust me, I'm a scientist".  Tigerboy1966   19:44, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

I was amazed that at least some of the footprints were not preserved using the well-established techniques used by sedimentologists to remove block samples or make casts of the prints. I am not a sedimentologist and have not pursued this issue, but do have one old reference on my bookshelf: "Methods for the study of sedimentary structures" Arnold H. Bouma (1969) John Wiley & Sons 458 pp, SBN 471 09120 0. This may provide a starting point to find more recent references. The researchers themselves can probably provide such references. Reading the research paper gave me confidence they knew what they were doing and decided to prioritize gathering information about the prints over preserving samples of them when there was insufficient time to do both.

The photogrammetry technique allowed a detailed and quantitative study of the undisturbed prints. They also tried a laser technique, but the deterioration of the prints with time made this less useful. The study area was too large to remove it all as block samples without possible damage and distortion that was avoided by study in place. With the focus on research to gain the most information from the prints before they were degraded too much to study, I am more sympathetic to their apparent decision to not remove part of the surface as preserved samples, a destructive process that would have eliminated study of the removed areas by in-situ methods once these were removed.

I don't know the detailed chronology of their efforts and whether they might have been able to remove select areas sooner for preservation. I know they were working under time stress and didn't want to damage their surface more than necessary until they had tried all the more sophisticated techniques they could. Once the surface was significantly damaged, taking block samples for later display would have been nearly pointless scientifically. However, as a museum display for the general public, even a poor sample might have had value and I still have a feeling that a peripheral part of the surface might have been preserved earlier after it was photographed. That is after-the-fact quibbling based on insufficient information, so I won't pursue it. I do suggest, however, that the researchers add a couple of sentences explaining their rationale to not preserve some block samples of part of the surface.Tony Cooley (talk) 01:42, 10 February 2014 (UTC)


 * The question here I think, is whether the prints are of any use other that as a visual aid. The tools and material recovered from the site seems a lot more relevant, historically. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.187.18.2 (talk) 12:11, 10 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia is not a forum. Please keep comments to changes in the article, not general speculation about the topic.204.65.34.237 (talk) 17:29, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

reversed magnetism
I added a link to "reversed magnetism": reversed magnetism. If that is incorrect could someone with more knowledge of the subject please change the link to the correct term? Thank you. Risssa (talk) 03:44, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Other important historical information we can get from this ...
"The earliest human footprints outside of Africa are discovered in the United Kingdom."
 * To be followed with "Researchers are very excited since they believe the direction of the footprints likely indicates where the nearest pub was at the time." Daniel Case (talk) 15:08, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Reader feedback: Can you flag this for someon...
108.27.112.253 posted this comment on 10 February 2014 (view all feedback).

"Can you flag this for someone to tighten-up? For example, newspaper articles develop and then perpetuate misconceptions. The Independent as a source for a date being either 850,000 or 950,000 BP. I suspect that a range was given originally, 850,000-950,000, rather than either extreme. That makes me suspect there are many more errors, not to mention the critiques and debates over the interpretation as presented in PLOS ONE.  But thanks for getting this started!"

This seems a useful piece of feedback to consider. —Tom Morris (talk) 13:00, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

I saw that user comment and made a slight change that I hope makes it clearer. ► Philg88 ◄ star.png 15:25, 10 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree that the feedback is useful, but I think we need to be very careful here. The Independent article states "Archaeologists are now trying to determine the precise age of the footprints. They have so far succeeded in narrowing it down to two possible dates - around 850,000 years ago or 950,000 years ago. Only intense further study will reveal which of those two alternatives is the correct one", which clearly indicates a choice of two discrete dates and not a date range. The conspiracy theorists above have said that we should not trust the scientists that have been studying this site for three years, and now we are being told not to trust David Keys who is the noted archaeology correspondent for a reputable broadsheet newspaper. As Wikipedians we can only report what reliable sources state, and we should not assume that the source must have misunderstood the facts, and then change the facts to fit our assumptions.  In fact, given the dating methodology used at Happisburgh, which is based largely on palaeofauna and palaeoflora, I can imagine that scientists could arrive at two possible discrete dates 100,000 years apart -- the fauna and flora is indicative of either c. 850,000 or c. 950,000 years ago, but not c.900,000 years ago when the climate was much hotter or colder; when (hypothetically) they determine what species of vole the teeth they found in the sediment came from then they'll be able to be sure which of the two dates is correct. BabelStone (talk) 20:43, 10 February 2014 (UTC)


 * The Current Archaeology piece which I've added to our article also talks about "either 840,000 or 950,000 years ago". Prioryman (talk) 22:51, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, it is good to have two sources for the dating. However, CA says "Some of these deposits are thought to have been laid down either 840,000 or 950,000 years ago" (my emphasis), but you have edited the article to say "The date range is thus thought to be around 840,000 to 950,000 years ago" which I think is not quite right as it turns the two possible dates into a range. I think that based on the sources we should keep it as "c. 840,000 or c. 950,000 years ago". BabelStone (talk) 23:42, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
 * The sediments show a reversed magnetic polarity (and are therefore prior to the Brunhes normal epoch, which began circa 780 ka) and have interglacial (warm) vegetation content. The footprints therefore were made in sediments older than 780 ka in a warm period. The global benthic oxygen isotope stack (Lisiecki and Raymo 2005) indicates warm periods at around 850 and 950 ka; the palaeomagnetically normal interval of the Jaramillo just before 1 Ma is excluded. The deconvolved ice volume/temperature record of Elderfield et al. 2013 provides similar windows, centred around 845 and 945 ka. Given that hominins (H antecessor?) made the impressions, I would guess it's more likely to be the more recent of the two, though it's just a guess - if hominins could have been there at around 850 ka, then there must be a chance that they could have been there at 950 ka instead (or as well!). The real mystery is why hominins seem to have left Britain alone in the Eemian (MIS 5), around 125 ka BP. Orbitalforam (talk) 09:40, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Incidentally, there is a very good Natural History Museum piece about the footprints here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHFFMyBb1O8 This indicates that there are more footprints under the (rapidly eroding) cliffs and seems to indicate that the observed footprints were not destroyed by the tide, just covered for the time being by a sand layer. Orbitalforam (talk) 10:28, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Earliest?
I remember reading somewhere many years ago that human footprints have been found on (I think) sandstone in material that was dated as being so old as to be impossible for them to actually be human – on the order of several million years old. This might have been in the context of disproving the way that scientists date sedimentary rock. I didn't think much about it until I took a geology class 30 or so years ago at North Carolina State University where the professor was showing slides that included a shot of footprints like those, and as I remember, they were in or near the United States somewhere (Kentucky?) in rock that was maybe 1.5 million years old. He presented it as a mystery that had not been explained up until that point in time. Anyone else out there have any such memories? Shocking Blue (talk) 13:57, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Is this to what is being referred?: http://www.badarchaeology.com/?page_id=185 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kinhull (talk • contribs) 08:46, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

That looks like the one; it does appear to be 'bad archaeology' indeed Shocking Blue (talk) 07:57, 13 February 2014 (UTC)