Modern Humans Trample Eve's Footprints

LANGEBAAN, South Africa - The oldest known footprints of an anatomically modern human are in danger of destruction on the shores of a sparkling lagoon here after having been preserved by nature for 117,000 years.

The sudden menace? Human feet. Lots of them.

Scientists say the extraordinary pair of footprints, discovered in 1995 but revealed to the public only last year, have become so popular among barefoot beach-goers that the soft sandstone impressions may not last the South African summer.

"People are climbing the rock and putting their feet in the prints," said David Roberts, the geologist who made the discovery while scaling sand dunes at the West Coast National Park about 70 miles northwest of Cape Town. "It looks like the front left print has already been damaged."

The threat to the rare prints has become so worrisome that the National Parks Board will meet today to consider removing them to a museum for safekeeping. Officials said the National Geographic Society, which publicized the existence of the prints in its magazine in September, has offered to pay for the move.

Removal could destroy them

But extracting the calcified impressions from the jagged coastline carries tremendous risks, with geologists fearing that the fragile gray sandstone could crumble. Some scientists have suggested that the prehistoric footprints must remain in their natural setting to be truly understood and appreciated, while tourism officials fear that a huge attraction will be lost if the archaeological novelty is relegated to a stuffy museum.

Last year's announcement of the footprints by National Geographic and the South African Journal of Science created a worldwide sensation. Unlike much older prints of apelike beings found elsewhere in Africa, the Langebaan Lagoon discovery offers a direct link to a critical period in human evolution believed to have been the cradle of humankind as we know it today.

"You could sit next to this person on the bus and not get too scared," said Roberts, a scientist with the Council for Geoscience in Cape Town.

Mother to us all?

The prints were most likely left by a small woman with a modern-day U.S. shoe size of 7 1/2.

Roberts and Lee Berger, an American paleoanthropologist at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, have determined that the prints were left after a turbulent rainstorm on a steep and shifting sand dune.

Researchers named the mystery walker Eve.

A so-called "genetic Eve" - she carried a particular type of DNA measured in women today - is thought to have lived in Africa 100,000 to 300,000 years ago.

Much of the popular intrigue surrounding the prints stems from the theoretical possibility that the Langebaan Eve was mother to us all.

Graffiti near the site

Although National Geographic and the Journal of Science did not disclose the exact whereabouts of the footprints, the lagoon is a favorite recreation and tourist attraction, particularly among windsurfers. It was not long before a South African television crew pinpointed the spot.

Fearing the worst, Roberts applied in October to the National Monument Council, which has jurisdiction over archaeological artifacts, to have the prints removed. The council refused, suggesting instead that they be covered with a protective seal and that authorities "trust that public interest would wane."

The paleontological "interest of the footprints really lies where they were found," said Janette Deacon, an archaeologist on the council.

Deacon and other officials visited the lagoon with Roberts and were stunned by the misuse: Nearby rocks had even been etched with graffiti. This month, the monument council recommended to the parks board, which has final say on the footprints, that they be removed. The council also accepted an offer from Engen Limited, a South African oil company, to post security guards.

Nature also causing damage

Even if the sandstone boulder were to survive the trampling of a thousand feet, Mother Nature has begun exacting a toll as well.

The prints had been protected in a rocky dune for nearly 117,000 years, breaking away only in the past 25 years or so. The breakage made Roberts' discovery possible, but it also has exposed the prints to rain, wind and lapping seas. Roberts said that if careless humans don't do in the footprints, erosion will.

"People are worried about preserving the context of the footprints, but something that is destroyed has no context," Roberts said. "For the life of me, I can't perceive why people don't understand why these footprints can't stay where they are."