The announcement this week that ancient footprints were found beneath a 1,700-year-old mosaic in Lod, Israel, raises some interesting, if not always serious, thoughts. Basically, the mosaic (covering about 180 square meters) was being lifted from the ground for conservation and eventual display. In the mortar bed in which the mosaic tiles were set, conservators found ancient foot and sandal impressions. That led to the non-startling conclusion that the artisans had worked on the floor sometimes wearing sandals and sometimes in their bare feet. Yet here’s what the head of the Israel Antiquities Authority’s art conservation branch had to say about the find: “It’s exciting. This is the first time I have ever encountered personal evidence such as this under a mosaic.”

Now have a look at the mosaic itself in this news report. Not only is it big, but it also is real piece of artistry, with an elephant in the center, lions and leopards, antelope, birds (including a peacock), and a panel stocked with fish and sailing ships. Pretty neat. Granted that the mosaic was found a few years ago, but the immediacy of the footprints in making a human connection is the whole story. Here’s Neguer again: “It is fascinating to discover a 1,700-year-old personal mark of people who are actually like us, who worked right here on the same mosaic.” Of course the mosaic is one huge mark of people “who are actually like us” but the humble footprint somehow captures the imagination.

The Lod footprints aren’t the first or oldest found by any means. There are famous footprints in Hawaii, discovered in 1919, which may (or may not) be related to a dynastic struggle in the 1780s. And there are the famous Laetoli tracks, the oldest known, which record the passing of some Australopithecus afarenis in what is now Tanzania around 3.6 million years ago. Mary Leakey found those in 1978. In between, our forebears and prehistoric cousins left a lot of footsteps. There are 20,000-year-old ones in Australia and 50,000-year-old ones in Korea. But what do these really tell us? Take, for example, the 117,000-year-old footprints left in moist sand along the coast of what’s now South Africa. They made a big splash when found in the 1990s and were touted as the oldest footprints of modern humans. Nice, but didn’t we know that we were walking upright back then?

Some footprints are more interesting because of their great age and because they represent other hominid species. The three tracks found in ash on Italy’s Roccamonfina volcano, for example, are at least 325,000 years old and were left by Homo heidelbergensis. They really add to our knowledge of this early human form. And I like the footprint left in the muddy floor of Romania’s Vartop Cave by a Neanderthal some time before 62,000 years ago. (I confess to succumbing to the “human” aspect of footprints with this one.) There are also controversial ones, like those in Mexico’s Valsequillo Basin, which seem improbably early even if there are human.

This year has been a good one for ancient footprints. Some 2,000+ year-old ones have been reported from China: “There was no blacktop road back then,” explains the archaeologist, “and the footprints they left on the muddy route remained intact even today.” At Ngare Sero, Tanzania, archaeologists investigated tracks of modern humans that eclipse the old record of the 117,000-year-old South African ones by three millennia. Perhaps most intriguing are the two sets of footprints in Kenya dated to 1.5 million years ago and left by Homo erectus. This last example brings up a question of standardization. They are said to be about right for a men’s size 9 shoe, while the Lod, Israel, feet are graded in European sizes (34, 37, 42, and 44) making a direct comparison difficult.

But back to the original point about footprints somehow affording a direct connection to not just the past, but to ancient or prehistoric people. I think Steve Webb of Bond University in Australia hit it on the mark when talking about the tracks at Mungo National Park mentioned above: “This is the nearest we’ve got to prehistoric film where you can see someone’s heel slip in the mud as they’re running fast…. It brings that element of life that other archaeological remains can’t.” The most evocative ancient footprints I’ve seen weren’t even human—they were dog tracks left behind on roof tiles at a site in Greece. It doesn’t take much imagination to visualize the tile maker’s reaction as the pooch trotted across the tiles neatly laid out to dry before firing.

This entry was posted by Mark Rose on Friday, October 16, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

Comments posted here do not represent the views or policies of the Archaeological Institute of America.