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It's great that this story has finally come out as i have been following an article from Nature/Channel 4 website since about 2001. There has been nothing since then!
Article: What do 20,000 year old footprints in Tibet mean?
Scientists have discovered footprints and handprints made 20,000 years ago, high on the Tibetan Plateau, during the Ice Age. Previous researchers believed that this area was covered with a thick glacier at that time and that humans only settled there about 4,000 years ago.
In fact, a very hot spring situated 85km from Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, would have made it habitable- as the footprints prove.
The spring water is rich in minerals and gases which precipitate out to form a soft mud. This then solidifies, forming a hard limestone called travertine. Nineteen hand and footprints have been found in the resulting marble-like rocks. Quartz gives off light in proportion to the time that has passed since it was last exposed to sunlight- this called thermoluminescence. In this case, grains of quartz trapped in the travertine containing the footprints indicated that the area had been inhabited some 16,000 years than previously thought.
This was the end of the article. I have some more bumff from Nature journal but don't know where at the moment. It's very exciting that the chinese have finally published this but no mention of the footprints? Thanks for the added info,
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road