36,500-Year- Old Footprints Discovered In Carpathian Mountain Cave Could Re-Write History

MessageToEagle.com – Transylvania is not only famous for Count Dracula’s legend and its enigmatic almost spooky surroundings.

This is a region rich in history where many battles were fought.

In its ancient history, the territory of Transylvania belonged to a variety of empires and states, including the Celts, Scythians, the Kingdom of Dacia and the Roman Empire.

But radiocarbon measurements of two cave bear bones excavated just below the footprints now indicate that Homo sapiens made these tracks around 36,500 years ago, say anthropologist David Webb of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania and his colleagues.

It is in Transylvania we come across a cave that contains footprints that could change our understanding of the past.

Based on new dating scientists have now confirmed that the footprints discovered in a Carpathian Mountain cave are much older than previously thought.

The footprints are not 10,000 to 15,000 years old as assumed earlier, but could be up to 36,500 years old. Who were the mysterious people that inhabited the cave?

What happened to them?

The Carpathians are a mountain system located in Eastern Europe, and the source of the Dniester, Tisza and Vistula Rivers.

They form the natural border between Slovakia and southern Poland, and then extend southward through Ukraine and into Romania.

In the 1960s, about 400 footprints were discovered in a Ciur-Izbuc cave located in the Western Carpathians of Transylvania, Romania.

Scientists initially attributed the impressions to a man, woman and child who lived 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. Since that time though, much of the human evidence and that of the cave bear, a species now said to be extinct, were destroyed.

Researchers returned to Ciur-Izbuc Cave in 2012 to analyze footprints that were left – only 25 percent originally described still remain, according to the study.

“The age of the prints was based partly on their association with cave bear (Ursus spelaeus) footprints and bones, and the belief that cave bears became extinct near the end of the last ice age. Since their discovery, the human and bear evidence and the cave itself have attracted spelunkers and other tourists, with the result that the ancient footprints are in danger of destruction by modern humans, “scientists wrote in their paper.

“It is impossible to confirm some of the original conclusions. The footprints do not cluster about three different sizes, and the number of individuals is estimated to be six or seven, including at least one child. They entered the cave after a flood had coated its floor with sandy mud.

Unfortunately, insufficient footprints remain to measure movement variables such as stride length. However, detailed three-dimensional mapping of the footprints does allow a more precise description of human movements within the cave.

At a 2011 conference, scientists said that H. sapiens tracks at Tanzania’s Engare Sero site were 120,000 years old. If that is correct, it would mean they are the world’s oldest footprints. However, those findings have not been published yet.

The footprints discovered in the Ciur-Izbuc Cave force scientists to re-evaluate their understanding of these mysterious people who lived in the Carpathians 36,500 years ago.

This finding along with many other surprising ancient discoveries show us once again we still know very little about our ancient origins and history of our planet.

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