SEEDS & WEEDS: The Funniest Things People Have Said About GARDENING

332 QUIPPERY / SEEDS & WEEDS
“Gentlemen, welcome to Engare Sero,” she said. “Glad you could take
us up on our invitation.”
Without further formalities, she drove us out to the site she and her
team had been investigating.
“This, my friends,” she said, waving her arm across the stretch of
darkish gray mudflat in front of us, “is one of the most spectacular
discoveries of human footprints ever found.”
“What makes it so special?” one of us asked.
“Two things,” she said. “First, this site has more footprints than any
other site discovered so far — more than four hundred all together in this
one spot. Second, they’re extraordinarily well preserved.”
“How old are they?”
“We’ve dated them between 5,000 and 19,000 years old,” she said.
“So they were modern humans.”
“Yes,” Denisova said. “Anatomically modern humans, just like us.”
“And the oldest footprints ever found? Where are they, and how old?”
“There are a couple of sites along the coast of South Africa with
footprints around 120,000 years old,” Denisova said. “And some of the
oldest prints are not even in Africa. In Great Britain, on a beach in
Norfolk, they’ve found human footprints estimated to be between
850,000 and 950,000 years old, if you can imagine. Then there’s a site
just about 60 miles southwest of here with footprints that are 3.6 million
years old.”