Well done, Andy. This is spot on. Human evolution has been one of the most exciting fields of science for many years, with a constant overturning of established narratives. One of the long-term narratives in our culture is that there is such a thing as wilderness, lands “substantially untrammeled by man” in the words of the Wilderness Act. In fact, as the White Sands footprints show, humans have been in North America since most of the continent was covered in ice, and the forests to the south were radically different from now. A wilderness area as defined by US law is a place where we kicked out the indigenous people and pretended the land was untrammeled. The White Sands discovery, and many others like it, serve not just to correct the (pre)historical record, but should also inform our present understanding of our relations to the natural world.
Well done, Andy. This is spot on. Human evolution has been one of the most exciting fields of science for many years, with a constant overturning of established narratives. One of the long-term narratives in our culture is that there is such a thing as wilderness, lands “substantially untrammeled by man” in the words of the Wilderness Act. In fact, as the White Sands footprints show, humans have been in North America since most of the continent was covered in ice, and the forests to the south were radically different from now. A wilderness area as defined by US law is a place where we kicked out the indigenous people and pretended the land was untrammeled. The White Sands discovery, and many others like it, serve not just to correct the (pre)historical record, but should also inform our present understanding of our relations to the natural world.