Rosa Rubicondior: Creationism Refuted - Humans Were Leaving Footprints In Lakeside Mud 11,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Tuesday, 20 October 2026

Creationism Refuted - Humans Were Leaving Footprints In Lakeside Mud 11,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Fig. 2. Ancient human footprints and other ichnological features.

(A) A large canid track superimposed on a human footprint excavated on TH3. Photo Credit: K.B.S., US Geological Survey (USGS). (B) Linear features (LF) on TH2 that have been interpreted as travois pulled by humans, presumably during transport of resources (2). Photo Credit: K.B.S., USGS. (C) Orthomosaic of the surface of TP15 showing human footprints (Photo Credit: M.R.B., Bournemouth University). (D) Color rendered height map of multiple human footprints on TH0. (E) Color rendered height map of human footprints on TH(−3).

From: Kathleen B. Springer et al.(2026).

Footprints in the (white) sand: Humans experienced abrupt environmental shifts during the last ice age | University of Arizona News

More than 20,000 years before the present, people were walking along a lakeshore in what is now New Mexico, leaving footprints that would eventually become a serious inconvenience for biblical literalists. At White Sands National Park, those tracks preserve evidence of human lives during the Last Glacial Maximum — long before the supposed creation of the Universe in the chronology favoured by young-Earth creationists, let alone their alleged global flood and subsequent repopulation of the Americas.

Now, research published open access in Science Advances reaffirms that the footprints date to approximately 23,500–21,700 years ago. It also reconstructs a changing landscape: retreating Lake Otero, shifts from conifer forest towards steppe vegetation, and episodes of severe aridity. Some changes occurred within a human lifetime. These were people inhabiting a dynamic Ice Age environment, leaving their tracks alongside those of mammoths, giant sloths and dire wolves.

The history of the dating is itself an instructive example of how science works. The original age estimates, announced in 2021, attracted criticism because they relied on seeds from aquatic plants. Such plants can absorb dissolved ancient carbon, potentially making radiocarbon dates appear older than they really are. That was a legitimate methodological objection, and the appropriate response was to test it. A follow-up study reported in 2023 used pollen from terrestrial conifers and an independent technique that measures when mineral grains were last exposed to sunlight. Both supported the ancient chronology.

The latest investigation builds on that work with refined dating and environmental evidence from pollen and sediment chemistry, including hydrogen isotopes in preserved plant waxes. Together, these provide a record of changing vegetation and water availability against which the human presence can be understood. The footprints are therefore part of a much richer history than a single ancient walk across wet ground.

For young-Earth creationism, the problem is fundamental. Within its preferred chronology, these people were living in North America before there was supposedly an Earth for them to inhabit. Invoking a later dispersal from Noah’s Ark does nothing to explain evidence that predates the alleged creation itself. Meanwhile, the scientific account has become stronger through criticism, additional measurements and independent checks. Its conclusions remain open to revision, but revision requires evidence — and the evidence from White Sands continues to place human history far beyond the confines of Genesis.

Dating the White Sands footprints — and reading the climate recorded in plant wax. The White Sands sediments preserve two complementary records: evidence of when people walked there, and evidence of the environment they experienced. Different methods answer these different questions.

Radiocarbon dating: establishing the age

Plants incorporate carbon as they grow, including a small proportion of radioactive carbon-14. After plant material forms and ceases exchanging carbon with its surroundings, its carbon-14 gradually decays, with a half-life of approximately 5,730 years. Measuring the amount remaining allows researchers to estimate its age. Radiocarbon measurements are then calibrated against independently established records of past atmospheric carbon-14 to obtain calendar-age estimates.

A footprint itself contains no organic material that can necessarily be dated. Researchers therefore date suitable material in the surrounding sedimentary layers and establish its relationship to the surface on which the footprint was made. Careful excavation and the sequence of layers are essential: an ancient object washed into younger sediment would not automatically date that sediment.

The original White Sands chronology relied on seeds of the aquatic plant Ruppia. This raised a reasonable concern: aquatic plants can absorb dissolved carbon that is already old. If this happens, their apparent radiocarbon ages can exceed their true ages — a problem known as a reservoir effect.

To test this, researchers dated pollen from terrestrial conifers in the same layers. These plants obtain their carbon from atmospheric carbon dioxide, avoiding the particular old-carbon problem affecting aquatic plants. The pollen dates agreed with the seed dates. Improved pollen extraction and refined radiocarbon methods underpin the latest chronology, which places the footprint-bearing sequence at approximately 23,500–21,700 years ago.

Luminescence dating: an independent check

An earlier investigation also used optically stimulated luminescence, or OSL. Mineral grains accumulate energy from natural background radiation while buried. Exposure to sunlight can empty these energy traps, effectively resetting the clock. In the laboratory, light stimulates the grains to release their stored energy as a faint luminescence signal.

By comparing that signal with the rate at which the surrounding environment supplies radiation, researchers estimate how long the grains have been buried since their last sufficient exposure to sunlight. At White Sands, quartz grains provided a minimum age of approximately 21,500 years, independently supporting the radiocarbon chronology. This check was reported in 2023; it should not be confused with the new study's environmental reconstruction.

Plant-wax hydrogen isotopes: reconstructing water and climate

Many plants coat their leaves with waxes that help limit water loss. Some of these wax molecules resist decomposition and survive in sediments long after the rest of the plant has decayed. Their chemistry preserves information about the water used by the plant when the wax was made.

Hydrogen occurs naturally in different isotopic forms:

Hydrogen-1: the common, lighter form, with one proton and no neutron.
Hydrogen-2, or deuterium: a rarer, heavier form, with one proton and one neutron.
Both are stable isotopes. Neither acts as a radioactive clock. Researchers instead measure their relative abundance in selected wax compounds, usually expressing the result as δ²H, also written δD: the isotope ratio relative to an international reference, reported in parts per thousand.

Water containing the lighter isotope evaporates more readily. Evaporation therefore tends to leave the remaining water relatively enriched in deuterium. Condensation and rainfall also separate the isotopes, so the isotopic composition of precipitation varies with moisture source, temperature, season and the history of an air mass.

Plants take up this water and incorporate some of its hydrogen into organic molecules, including leaf waxes. Evaporation from soils and leaves, together with the biochemical processes that manufacture wax, modifies the original signal. Nevertheless, the wax retains a measurable relationship to the plant's water supply and growing conditions.

Researchers extract wax compounds from successive sediment samples and measure their hydrogen isotope ratios using mass spectrometry. Changes through the sequence can reveal changes in the water cycle. However, a higher deuterium value is not a universal, stand-alone measure of drought: shifts in rainfall source, seasonality and vegetation can also affect the result. Interpretation requires evidence from the local setting and other environmental indicators.

Combining the evidence

At White Sands, plant-wax isotope measurements were interpreted alongside fossil pollen and sedimentary evidence. Pollen helps identify changes in vegetation; sediments record changes in the lake and its margins; wax chemistry provides additional evidence about water availability. Together, these indicate substantial environmental change, including a major episode of aridity.

The dating methods supply the timeline on which these changes can be placed. The distinction is straightforward: radiocarbon and luminescence help establish when; plant-wax hydrogen isotopes help explain what conditions were like. Their combination allows researchers to reconstruct a changing landscape inhabited by people during the Last Glacial Maximum.

Brief glossary

Isotope:

a form of an element with the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons.

Half-life:

the time required for half the atoms of a radioactive isotope in a sample to decay.

Reservoir effect:

an apparent radiocarbon-age offset caused by an organism incorporating carbon from a source whose carbon-14 content differs from that of the contemporary atmosphere.

Fractionation:

a process that changes isotope ratios because lighter and heavier isotopes behave slightly differently.

Proxy:

a measurable feature used to infer a past environmental condition that cannot be observed directly.

Biomarker:
a molecule derived from an organism that can preserve evidence of past life or environmental conditions.

University of Arizona: the White Sands environmental reconstruction.
USGS: independent checks on the footprint dates.
Research on leaf-wax hydrogen isotopes as a climate proxy.

A University of Arizona news release accompanied the paper published in Science Advances:

Footprints in the (white) sand: Humans experienced abrupt environmental shifts during the last ice age
Expanded excavations at White Sands National Park in New Mexico have provided researchers an opportunity to refine the age of the oldest human footprints in North America and establish a deeper understanding of the landscape and environmental conditions at the time humans were present there.

Listen to the story

The new study, published in Science Advances by a team of researchers including the University of Arizona, the United States Geological Survey and other partners, reveals a dynamic environment indicating the humans who left their tracks along an ancient lake shore experienced abrupt changes in temperature and water availability within their lifetimes.
The research team previously discovered and confirmed the White Sands human footprints to be the oldest evidence of human presence in North America, placing people on the continent thousands of years earlier than once thought.

The research details innovative extraction procedures used to isolate up to 75,000 individual pollen grains per sample and refined dating methods used at the USGS Radiocarbon Laboratory. This resulted in a more precise age of the site and reaffirmed the White Sands footprints date to between 23.5 and 21.7 thousand years ago, or during the Last Glacial Maximum. The new chronology was key to unlocking the rest of the story, which includes a deeper understanding of the abrupt environmental changes that early humans in North America faced.

The researchers used the new chronology to investigate the climate and environmental changes at a timescale equivalent to a human generation, or approximately 50 years, which is rare for terrestrial paleoclimate archives of this time period from the southwestern U.S.

The White Sands sediments are unique in that they allow us to reconstruct environmental conditions during the last ice age at a very high temporal resolution, so that we can see fluctuations that were relevant for the humans present at that time.

Professor Jessica Tierney, co-author
Department of Geosciences
The University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ, USA.

Tierney applied her expertise in the analysis of geochemical signatures captured in sediments, which she combined with fossil pollen from the plants growing in the surrounding landscape, to reconstruct temperature, precipitation, aridity and plant communities. The results show the climate at White Sands was dynamic. Humans witnessed a complete turnover of the landscape from conifer forest to sagebrush and oak steppe and the recession of Lake Otero, a massive lake that would have covered most of what is White Sands National Park during the last ice age. By measuring isotopes – elemental atoms that differ by their number of neutrons, in this case, hydrogen – in leaf waxes of preserved plant material, Tierney's group at the U of A discovered that there were also swings in water availability within a century that included severe aridity during an abrupt warming event also recorded in ice core samples from Greenland.

This tells us that local changes in aridity at White Sands were quite large and followed global climate shifts.

Professor Jessica Tierney.

During the last glacial maximum, when the humans left their footprints in what likely was a muddy plain, temperatures in the Southwest were generally cooler, around 50 degrees Fahrenheit, as opposed to today's annual mean temperatures around 60 degrees in that area, Tierney explained. During the sudden shift documented by pollen in the sedimentary layers, vegetation changed from pine forest to pinyon and juniper, all within about 100 years.

Tierney said that varying amounts of pollen left behind by Ruppia, an aquatic plant that likes to grow in desert streams and springs, indicate Lake Otero's water level went up and down over the course of about 1,500 years.

Eventually the lake shrunk more and more until it gave way to a flat playa. And throughout that whole sequence, people were walking there, leaving their tracks alongside those of mammoths, giant sloths and dire wolves.

Professor Jessica Tierney.

Having an exquisitely preserved record of the environmental conditions and changes, such as rainfall, temperatures and vegetation in the same place with tracks left by humans and wildlife at the same time is extremely unique for the Southwest, if not globally, Tierney added.

Even though these footprints have been buried in the gypsum mud for more than 20,000 years, they look like someone walked out on the playa yesterday. This is an incredibly rare opportunity to be able to do paleoclimate reconstruction and combine it with archeology in the same exact place.

Professor Jessica Tierney.

Next, the researchers want to delve deeper into what exactly happened at the time – what mechanisms may have been at work that would have caused a warming event in Greenland to cause drying in the American Southwest.

This study fulfilled a long-term research goal at White Sands – to expand the originally published footprint site and sample for environmental indicators to help further our understanding of the complete context of conditions at the height of the Last Glacial Maximum. It's remarkable that early humans in the region were real-time witnesses to a rapidly changing environment discernible within a human lifetime – that is really food for thought.

Kathleen Springer, co-lead author.
US Geological Survey
Denver, CO., USA.

[the findings] humanize the deep Indigenous past of the Americas. This research continues to remind scientists and the wider public that these resilient ancient human populations are the ancestors of contemporary Indigenous peoples, providing important scientific evidence in support of sovereign Native nations' oral traditions and reinforcing the fact that we have been here since time immemorial.

Associate Professor Edward A. Jolie, co-author.
Arizona State Museum and School of Anthropology
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ, USA.

Publication:
Kathleen B. Springer et al.
Humans experienced abrupt environmental changes at White Sands during the Last Glacial Maximum. Sci. Adv. 12, eaeh0707 (2026). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aeh0707

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Abstract
Expanded excavations at White Sands National Park have unearthed 20 stratigraphic horizons containing in situ human footprints, megafaunal trackways, and linear features created by travois. Advances in radiocarbon dating of conifer pollen, combined with ages of aquatic seeds, refines the chronology of the footprint-bearing sequence to between 23.5 and 21.7 thousand years ago (ka). Biomarker, pollen, and stratigraphic evidence indicate a complete overturning of the environment from a perennial lake to a playa and capture a large aridification episode coincident with Dansgaard-Oeschger event 2 at 23.2 ka, which shrank pluvial Lake Otero and allowed people to traverse the former shoreline area for nearly two millennia. This well-dated and highly resolved paleoclimate record provides compelling evidence that humans in North America experienced marked environmental changes during the Last Glacial Maximum.

Fig. 1. Geologic context and ichnological summary.

(A) Composite stratigraphy, track horizons (THs) and track packages (TPs), linear features (LFs), and chronologic samples (Ruppia seeds, pollen, and OSL) at WHSA Locality 2. Numbers of human tracks and individuals per square meter; megafaunal tracks of Proboscidea, Folivora (ground sloth), Carnivora (canid and possible ursid), and Aves; and travois pulled by humans are also shown. The red box depicts the extent of the stratigraphy at WHSA Locality 2 reported previously (1, 3). Low-quality tracks in TH(−2) were noted but not counted. (B) Size frequency distribution of human footprints from tracked surfaces of all ages. The four subgroups correspond to ages of (1) <4 years (n = 8), (2) 6.3 ± 0.1 years (n = 72), (3) 11.8 ± 0.2 years (n = 12), and (4) at least 13.8 ± 0.2 years (male) or 14.6 ± 0.2 years (female) (n = 60 total) (table S1). (C) Modeled dates (using model 4) for all THs and TPs based on the corrected ¹⁴C ages of the Ruppia seeds. This figure was generated using the Sequence function in OxCal v.4.4.4 (57) and the IntCal20 calibration curve (58).

Kathleen B. Springer et al.
Humans experienced abrupt environmental changes at White Sands during the Last Glacial Maximum. Sci. Adv. 12, eaeh0707 (2026). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aeh0707

Copyright: © 2026 The authors.
Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

The White Sands footprints present young-Earth creationism with a straightforward chronological problem. People were walking across this landscape more than 20,000 years ago, thousands of years before biblical literalists claim the Earth existed. Their tracks occur within a sedimentary sequence that also records changing vegetation, water availability and lake conditions. Explaining this evidence requires an account of the whole sequence, not simply dismissing an inconvenient radiocarbon date or invoking a global flood. The latter strategy raises an additional problem for creationists who insist that geological strata were laid down in a single catastrophic flood lasting a year: how would such a flood preserve footprints in lakeside mud, and arrange for them to appear in successively deeper layers?

The history of the research also illustrates the value of scientific scepticism. Questions about the original dating prompted further investigation using terrestrial pollen and an independent mineral-dating method. Those checks supported the ancient ages, while subsequent work refined the chronology and revealed more of the environment these people experienced. Confidence in the findings rests on this convergence of evidence and their survival under scrutiny. Scientific conclusions earn their credibility by being tested.

There are still questions about how and when people first reached the Americas, and about precisely how the environmental changes at White Sands affected their lives. The footprints do not settle every aspect of that history. But uncertainty about the details does not make every proposed explanation equally plausible, and it provides no support for compressing this deep human past into a recent dispersal from Noah’s Ark.

Once again, researchers investigating the natural world have incidentally exposed the inadequacy of a literal reading of Genesis. Their purpose was to understand ancient people and their changing surroundings; the difficulty for creationism follows from what they found. Those people left no written rebuttal of biblical literalism. They simply walked across a muddy lakeshore — and the evidence of their existence has outlasted the assumptions that would deny them a place in history.

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