Human footprint from 153,000 years ago 'pushes the clock back on mankind by 30 millennia'

New dating technologies have uncovered the oldest human footprints ever found – showing that two-legged homo sapiens were in South Africa almost 30,000 years earlier than previously thought.

The 153,000-year-old track was found in the Garden Route National Park, near the coastal town of Knysna on the Cape South Coast.

Previously, two other nearby sites – Nahoon and Langebaan – had yielded footprints or other traces dated at 124,000 years and 117,000 years respectively.

Just two decades ago, tracks dating back more than 50,000 years were exceedingly rare, scientists said.

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Writing in The Conversation, researchers Charles Helm, of Nelson Mandela University, and the University of Leicester's Andrew Carr said: "In 2023, the situation is very different. It appears that people were not looking hard enough or were not looking in the right places.

"Today, the African tally for dated hominin ichnosites (a term that includes both tracks and other traces) older than 50,000 years stands at 14.

"Given that relatively few skeletal hominin remains have been found on the Cape coast, the traces left by our human ancestors as they moved about ancient landscapes are a useful way to complement and enhance our understanding of ancient hominins in Africa."

The researchers said that optically-stimulated luminescence helped to find footprints on the Cape South Coast.

This dating method shows how long it has been since a grain of sand was exposed to sunlight, and that the Cape South Coast is the perfect location for this, thanks to sediments rich in quartz grains.

The researchers write: "We suspect that further hominin ichnosites are waiting to be discovered on the Cape South Coast and elsewhere on the coast.

"The search also needs to be extended to older deposits in the region, ranging in age from 400,000 years to more than 2 million years.

"A decade from now, we expect the list of ancient hominin ichnosites to be a lot longer than it is at present – and that scientists will be able to learn a great deal more about our ancient ancestors and the landscapes they occupied."

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