Ice Age Footprints
Directed by Bella Falk and David Dugan
On PBS on 25 May at 9PM EST, then streaming at聽
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IN January 2020, in a secret location within White Sands Park, New Mexico, geologists Kathleen Springer and Jeffrey Pigati began to dig out a trench in search of ancient human footprints. They hoped to shed light on two long-standing questions about the history of humans in North America: how long ago did people first arrive, and did humans hunt animals like mammoths and giant sloths to extinction?
Ice Age Footprints, which premieres at 9pm EST on 25 May as part of PBS鈥檚 Nova series, follows palaeontologist Kirk Johnson as he explores excavation sites in an ancient, dried-up lakebed. Johnson, who looks after the world鈥檚 largest natural history collection at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, is treading the same ground that humans, giant ground sloths, Columbian mammoths and packs of predatory dire wolves roamed more than 10,000 years ago. With the help of expert fossil hunters, he learns how recent revelations at the site could upend almost everything we know about the people who pioneered North America.
Most archaeologists agree, based on the estimated age of ancient tools, that humans arrived on the continent about 15,000 years ago, roughly 5000 years after the peak of the last glacial period. The consensus is that ancient people trekked through a newly formed ice-free corridor from Siberia to Alaska. We also know that many giant mammals disappeared from the region鈥檚 fossil record at a similar time, leading some experts to believe our ancestors鈥� appetite for meat sowed the seeds of the animals鈥� demise. Others, however, think climate change is to blame.
Archaeologist David Bustos is one of many who think the true timeline of when humans discovered North America has yet to be revealed. Bustos guides Johnson through stunning traces of ancient people who once walked barefoot in slippery sediment. This comes after some scene-setting that drags on a little too long, where the pair marvel at mammoth footprints that span more than 50 centimetres wide and three-clawed imprints left by giant ground sloths. Hollow patterns in the ground are digitally morphed into imposing ancient beasts using CGI that gives a feeling of the site as it was thousands of years ago, teeming with giant lifeforms living on the grassy shores of the watering hole.
Johnson then meets Matthew Bennett, a footprint expert who excitedly interprets a recent discovery they have made 鈥� the longest known track of human footprints in the world. While this does well to highlight the remarkable potential of these rare fossils to unearth the past, it does little to address the two key questions laid out at the start of the film.
After what feels like another detour, this time to a museum filled with skeletons of ancient mammals, we hear how fossil hunters have recently learned to include the perspectives of local Indigenous people, with benefits for all.
Finally, we return to trench-digging Pigati and Springer to hear the results of their analysis into ancient human footprints. Radiocarbon dating of ancient seeds preserved alongside the fossils reveals a shocking result that calls into question both when and how humans reached North America. 鈥淗oly鈥� Wow, just wow,鈥� says Pigati, recalling the moment of discovery. Frustratingly little is done to address the question of whether humans or climate change drove ancient megafauna to extinction, but we are left with the tantalising thought that an answer may lie hidden in the ground.
