Human footprints found off Canada coast evidence of 'first' North American settlers 13,000 years ago

Tracks of two adults and a child discovered along British Columbian shoreline

Photograph of a footprint beside a digitally-enhanced version. The toe impressions and arch indicating it is an impression of a right foot. (Duncan McLaren)

Footprints of people who lived 13,000 years ago have been discovered off the west coast of Canada, which scientists say could belong to the first North American settlers.

Researchers from the Hakai Institute and the University of Victoria in Canada excavated sites along the shoreline of Calvert Island in British Columbia, where at the end of the last ice age the sea level was two to three metres lower than it is today.

The archaeologists discovered 29 human tracks in the sediment, which carbon dating showed to be 13,000 years old. Measurements and enhanced photographs helped them identify the footprints of three different people, thought to be of two adults and a child, walking barefoot.

The findings indicate humans were present on the west coast of British Columbia as the world emerged from the last ice age. They add to a growing body of evidence that people travelled along a coastal route to move from Asia to North America at the time.

Academics believe giant glaciers locked up much of the Earth’s water during the last ice age, sinking sea levels so that a massive land bridge the size of Poland, called Beringia, connected the eastern tip of Russia to Alaska across what is now the 95km-wide stretch of sea called the Bering Strait.

The bridge allowed people to cross by foot to North America and eventually reach what is now British Columbia, Canada. Until then, both had probably been free from human habitation.

Now, much of the Pacific coast of Canada is covered by dense forest and can only be accessed by boat, making it difficult to look for archaeological evidence which could support the theory that humans travelled along the coast.

But the authors of the paper said further excavations were likely to uncover more human footprints in the area that would help to piece together the patterns of early human settlement on the coast of North America.