"Ghost Tracks" Remind Us of the Enduring Invincibility of Families

An artist’s depiction of what Utah’s West Desert looked like at the end of the last Ice Age 12,000 years ago.

Earlier this week, I was driving home from a family reunion in Illinois when I heard a report over the radio about the discovery of ancient human (adult and child) footprints not too far from my home in Utah.

This news touched me emotionally and unexpectedly. Just minutes before, I had been listening to an audio book, The Invincible Family (by Kimberly Ells), which examines the critical importance of family relationships as the irreplaceable foundation of civilization. Those thoughts now juxtaposed in my mind with 12,000-year-old parent-child footprints literally cast in stone during the last Ice Age.

Since arriving home, I've tried to learn as much as I can about these footprints. The area they were found in is as dry as dust today, like a lunar landscape, but 12,000 years ago it was a vast marsh, teeming with life: trees, birds, cattails, and, apparently, human families. Prior to this discovery, archeologists had found a pattern of hearths in the area where families probably gathered for dinner. Archeologists did not expect to discover human footprints, but ideal moisture conditions exposed "ghost tracks," which appear briefly then vanish until ideal conditions expose them again.

Life is not static, and there are few constants. The mammoths and mastodons who inhabited Utah in the pleistocene era are gone. The rivers that created the marsh in the West Desert dried up 9,500 years ago.

But the family endures. It is invincible and irreplaceable.

News Story: https://www.ksl.com/.../scientists-find-ancient...