the laminated silts, protecting them even more, so that after thousands of years those prints (still no more than depressions in soft mud) were as fresh as the moment when the feet that
made them were lifted clear.
In recent years the shape of the estuary has altered once more so that the tides have been able to strip away the protective peat, eventually exposing the layers containing the prints. Professor
Martin Bell, an archaeologist from the University of Reading, is carefully recording the footprints as they appear for the first time in all those millennia and then disappear for ever, eroded by
the waves. His team of volunteers use high-pressure water hoses to blast away the final layer of liquid mud so that the imprints are briefly clean and clear. If King Canute were reincarnated as a
mild-mannered academic, he would be Martin Bell – wishing the waves would wait but accepting that the tide does what the tide does.
But in those last fleeting moments they are the most poignant sight. These are the prints of bare feet; the toes widely splayed by lifetimes spent walking unshod over all manner of surfaces.
Some are close together, made by short strides and left behind by someone strolling. Sometimes the adult prints are accompanied by those of children. Other trails show the longer stride patterns of
men running. Everywhere there are the three-toed, fleurs-de-lys of wading birds; occasionally there are the ladylike prints of deer. They are almost too much, the human footprints: looking at them,
touching them, felt like eavesdropping, or secretly watching someone in an unguarded moment. I had to stare at them but part of me wanted to look away, out of respect for privacy.
In 1978 the archaeologist and anthropologist Mary Leakey found footprints left by a man, woman and child preserved in volcanic ash on theLaetoli Plain of Tanzania, in
southern Africa. They were made by members of an ancient species of human called Australophithecus afarensis , around three and a half million years ago. As well as the human trail, there
were prints left by animals – even the impressions of raindrops that fell while the family walked that day. After the little family had gone, a subsequent eruption by the same volcano buried
their prints with yet more ash, saving them for posterity.
The woman’s tracks show that at one point she paused and then veered to one side for a few strides. Leakey imagined she had sensed some danger – perhaps a predator – and that
she had felt the need to investigate. Maybe she thought briefly about suggesting a change of direction, before relaxing and rejoining her kin. ‘This motion, so intensely human, transcends
time,’ Leakey wrote later, for an article in National Geographic . ‘A remote ancestor just as you or I – experienced a moment of doubt.’
The Laetoli footprints have mostly been reburied, in hopes of preserving them. No such possibility exists for those much more recent footprints in south Wales. We can only appreciate them now,
before they disappear for ever.
Our ancient past is powerful magic, strong drink – even a little shot of it can snatch your breath away and make you wonder if you can, any more, believe what you are seeing. You tell
yourself over and over that these footprints are not fossils turned to everlasting stone, but marks as vulnerable as a name traced in wet sand with a stick. But it is unbelievable; they are
unbelievable.
This Britain is the house I live in. For a long time its inhabitants mistook it for a new-build, thought they were the first and only owners of someplace made just for them. James Hutton of
Edinburgh, scion of the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment, spotted the real depth of the foundations and realised it was a truly ancient dwelling. Then the Swiss naturalist and geologist
Louis Agassiz saw it had been knocked down and rebuilt – and while he thought the builders had come only once, rather than repeatedly, he was on the
made them were lifted clear.
In recent years the shape of the estuary has altered once more so that the tides have been able to strip away the protective peat, eventually exposing the layers containing the prints. Professor
Martin Bell, an archaeologist from the University of Reading, is carefully recording the footprints as they appear for the first time in all those millennia and then disappear for ever, eroded by
the waves. His team of volunteers use high-pressure water hoses to blast away the final layer of liquid mud so that the imprints are briefly clean and clear. If King Canute were reincarnated as a
mild-mannered academic, he would be Martin Bell – wishing the waves would wait but accepting that the tide does what the tide does.
But in those last fleeting moments they are the most poignant sight. These are the prints of bare feet; the toes widely splayed by lifetimes spent walking unshod over all manner of surfaces.
Some are close together, made by short strides and left behind by someone strolling. Sometimes the adult prints are accompanied by those of children. Other trails show the longer stride patterns of
men running. Everywhere there are the three-toed, fleurs-de-lys of wading birds; occasionally there are the ladylike prints of deer. They are almost too much, the human footprints: looking at them,
touching them, felt like eavesdropping, or secretly watching someone in an unguarded moment. I had to stare at them but part of me wanted to look away, out of respect for privacy.
In 1978 the archaeologist and anthropologist Mary Leakey found footprints left by a man, woman and child preserved in volcanic ash on theLaetoli Plain of Tanzania, in
southern Africa. They were made by members of an ancient species of human called Australophithecus afarensis , around three and a half million years ago. As well as the human trail, there
were prints left by animals – even the impressions of raindrops that fell while the family walked that day. After the little family had gone, a subsequent eruption by the same volcano buried
their prints with yet more ash, saving them for posterity.
The woman’s tracks show that at one point she paused and then veered to one side for a few strides. Leakey imagined she had sensed some danger – perhaps a predator – and that
she had felt the need to investigate. Maybe she thought briefly about suggesting a change of direction, before relaxing and rejoining her kin. ‘This motion, so intensely human, transcends
time,’ Leakey wrote later, for an article in National Geographic . ‘A remote ancestor just as you or I – experienced a moment of doubt.’
The Laetoli footprints have mostly been reburied, in hopes of preserving them. No such possibility exists for those much more recent footprints in south Wales. We can only appreciate them now,
before they disappear for ever.
Our ancient past is powerful magic, strong drink – even a little shot of it can snatch your breath away and make you wonder if you can, any more, believe what you are seeing. You tell
yourself over and over that these footprints are not fossils turned to everlasting stone, but marks as vulnerable as a name traced in wet sand with a stick. But it is unbelievable; they are
unbelievable.
This Britain is the house I live in. For a long time its inhabitants mistook it for a new-build, thought they were the first and only owners of someplace made just for them. James Hutton of
Edinburgh, scion of the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment, spotted the real depth of the foundations and realised it was a truly ancient dwelling. Then the Swiss naturalist and geologist
Louis Agassiz saw it had been knocked down and rebuilt – and while he thought the builders had come only once, rather than repeatedly, he was on the
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