[LINK] 'Footprints uncovered off B.C. coast could be oldest in North America"

[rfmcdonald]

The Globe and Mail's Mark Hume reports on proof of the discovery of evidence of an ancient migration.

More than 13,000 years ago, two adults and a child walked around a fire pit on Calvert Island, off the coast of British Columbia.

The footprints they left in soft clay near the shore were soon covered with black sand, which hid them until a team of archeologists led by Dr. Daryl Fedje and Dr. Duncan McLaren unearthed them recently, exposing what are believed to be the oldest footprints ever found in North America.

The find adds to a growing body of evidence that the first people didn’t arrive in the Americas via an ice-free corridor east of the Rockies about 12,000 years ago, but rather followed a route down the Pacific Coast much earlier.

“It makes the hair on the back of your head stand up,” Dr. McLaren said of the moment the archeologists from the Hakai Institute and the University of Victoria made their discovery.