Leaving an Impression for the Ages: Footprints from a Family Walk through the Mud at Least 2,500 Years Ago in Arizona are Reconnecting Local Tribes with their Past

About 2,500 to 3,000 years ago some early North Americans walked in Arizona and left their footprints in the clay and mud. The prints are still there, petrified now, and viewable at a modern construction site in Tucson.

Archaeologists working at the site of a new bridge and highway connection say the prehistoric footprints belonged to people who lived and farmed in the area part of the time and moved around at other times.

“It’s incredible, and we’re so excited,” Ian Milliken, an archaeologist with Pima County who is working on the project, told Ancient Origins. “There’s been an incredible outpouring of support from the public.”

Members of the Tohono O’odham Nation, whose reservation is in Arizona, have been some of the visitors to the site. A group of high-schoolers from the tribe also plans to make the trip to see the footprints next week. Other tribes have been invited to view the ancient prints as well.

Mr. Milliken said that there are 13 tribes with ancestral ties in the area, but whether the modern people are related to the people who left the footprints can’t be known because there is no DNA evidence from the prehistoric period.

Another one of the footprints (ArchaeologySouthwest.org photo)

Workers on the project have extracted two of the footprints in blocks and have taken castings of others so they can be replicated in a pedestrian showcase near the roadway for posterity, he said.