More than a quarter of a million years ago, ancient humans wandered a shallow lake alongside prehistoric elephants and rhinos in what is now Lower Saxony, a region in northwest Germany.
Proof of their existence is from three fossilized footprints they left behind that are among the oldest ever discovered in Europe and the oldest recorded in Germany, a recent study found.
The prints had been covered up for thousands of years, but a coal mining company cleared the area in order to reach deposits.
Archeologists at the University of Tubingen worked with a team of experts in geology, paleontology, and paleobotany to give context to the footprints.
They were able to “obtain a reliable picture of the landscape of 300,000 years ago,” said team member Flavio Altamura, a fellow at the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tubingen.
That picture involves a group of the now-extinct human species called Homo heidelbergensis, or Heidelberg people, as well as the first fossilized Rhio footprints ever discovered in Europe.
The Heidelberg people were similar to us
The Heidelberg people were thriving in what is now Europe long before Neanderthals or even Homo sapiens, said Jordi Serangeli, excavation supervisor at the dig site in Schoningen, Germany.
Despite being a different species, the people who left the prints were similar to us, he said.
“I prefer to focus on the similarities between us and our ancestors, rather than what separates us,” Serangeli explained. “They had the same physical and cognitive abilities as we do.”
That included the ability to craft weapons that were “exceptionally efficient” for both hunting and defending themselves, Serangeli said.
Two prints found at Schoningen are smaller, and were likely created by children. The researchers believe that Heidelberg’s people lived in mixed-age groups, as it is difficult to determine if the Heidelberg families were really a single family.
Regardless, the discovery is significant since most archeological evidence like buildings, weapons, and cooking is performed by adults. Whereas children generally don’t leave much evidence behind for scholars to study, Altamura said.
Researchers found the first ancient rhino print in Europe
The human prints were surrounded by many more fossilized footprints from prehistoric animals. Researchers even identified one print from a prehistoric rhino.
The beast was likely either a specimen of the species Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis, which had previously been identified in Siberia, or Stephanorhinus hemitoechus, a wooly rhino that lived throughout Europe.
This is the first print from either rhino in Europe.
Elephants at the lake may have weighed up to 13 tons
Prehistoric elephants weighing up to 13 tons also left prints in the lakebed. The species, Palaeoloxodon antiquus, was about twice the size of modern African elephants and may have been the largest land mammal to ever walk the Earth.
These ancient elephants were known to have long straight tusks, and they roamed Europe and Western Asia thousands of years before.
The company intends to fill in the old mine to create a lake. Visitors to the region will be able learn more about their ancient ancestors.
“A museum that showcases the findings has been constructed very near the mine site,” Altamura stated.
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