Opinion The Third Edit: A new history of the human race, one footprint at a time

Fictional sleuths have nothing on real-life palaeontologists. Sherlock Holmes and his ilk have pored over many a footprint, cigarette stub and bit of ash, magnifying glass in hand. The tools of the modern palaeontologist are more sophisticated but essentially of the same order, but the questions they investigate are far more difficult, the answers much less definitive. Each incremental finding tells the world a little more about its past and possibly offers lessons for the present. Researchers have found, in footprints in the sand in Kenya, a part of the hominid story that speaks to human evolution.

A paper published in the journal Science reveals how, by dating and analysing fossils of footprints in the Turkana Basin — once a muddy lake shore — palaeontologists were able to show that two species closely related to Homo Sapiens co-existed. Members of the two species were at the site days, if not hours, apart. One of them belongs to a genetic line now extinct, the other likely to a Homo erectus individual — the latter are direct ancestors of modern humans. Placing the actors on the scene is, of course, only half the battle. Did they compete, cooperate or just stay out of each other’s way? How did they live and what did they think of each other? Footprints can only tell us so much. But they can be an important piece in the larger puzzle.

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For too long, “survival of the fittest” was interpreted in the narrowest, most aggressive terms and used to justify every manner of human oppression — from racism to colonialism. Homo sapiens were presented as an aggressive species, which eradicated its “competitors” to emerge as dominant. Over recent years, though, the sleuthing of palaeontologists and genetic evidence has shown that people did not just conquer, they shared and assimilated: Several men and women across the world have both Neanderthal and Denovisian (other “human” species) DNA. Perhaps the people behind the footprints in the sand weren’t just competitors. Perhaps they were also neighbours, even friends.