Reply to Evidence for Humans at White Sands National Park during the Last Glacial Maximum Could Actually be for Clovis People ∼13,000 Years Ago by C. Vance Haynes, Jr.

Bennett et al. (2021, Science 373, 1528-1531) reported that ancient human footprints discovered in White Sands National Park, New Mexico date to between similar to 23,000 and 21,000 years ago. Haynes (2022, PaleoAmerica, this issue) proposes two alternate hypotheses to explain the antiquity of the footprints. One is that they were made by humans crossing over older sediments sometime during the Holocene. This is incorrect as there are Pleistocene megafauna tracks interspersed with the human footprints, so they cannot be Holocene in age. The other hypothesis maintains seeds used to date the human footprints were exhumed from older sediments, transported across the Tularosa Basin, and deposited on moist ground that was traversed by Clovis people at similar to 13,000 years ago. This scenario requires a series of events that are highly unlikely, if not impossible. We maintain the seeds were collected from their original depositional context and the ages of the footprints fall within the Last Glacial Maximum.

Automated summary

The ancient human footprints discovered in White Sands National Park, New Mexico have been dated to approximately 23,000 to 21,000 years ago. The authors of the study propose two hypotheses to explain the antiquity of the footprints, but through analysis of the footprints and their surrounding environment, they conclude that the footprints belong to the Last Glacial Maximum.