An international group of archaeologists has discovered traces of 153,000-year-old Homo sapiens in South Africa. These are the oldest footprints of human ancestors known to science. A study on this has been published in the journal. ichnos.

The discovery was made on the territory of the Garden Route National Park (South Africa). For dating, the scientists used the optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) method – which relies on determining the moment a mineral or any other object was last exposed to light.

The study notes that while there is older evidence of other hominid species in Africa, Asia and Europe, footprints in South Africa are the oldest left by Homo sapiens. Human ancestors are thought to have evolved around 300,000 years ago in Africa.

Most of the specimens we examined are between 70,000 and 130,000 years old, and we were surprised to find traces between them as old as 153,000 years. This discovery served as an incentive to continue searching for humanoid traces in sediments known to be even older.

It is about the southern coast of Cape Town (South Africa), where new excavations are planned to begin in the near future. Meanwhile, only 14 traces of more than 50,000 years ago attributed to Homo sapiens have been discovered before that, all found in Africa.