5. Footprints of a Paleoancient Civilization
Two enormously
anomalous discoveries were made in the American Southwest. On
October 8, 1992 the “American Weekly” section of the New York Sunday American carried an article
entitled “Mystery of the Petrified ‘Shoe Sole’ 5,000,000 Years
Old.” The article was by Dr. W.H. Ballou, who reported a discovery
by the geologist John Reid, who was digging for fossils in Nevada.
Much to his surprise, Reid discovered a very strange “fossil”
indeed, that of the sole print of a shoe in rock that was at least
5,000,000 years old!680 But five million
years proved to be far to late a date
for the print, since the rock on which it was found was from the
Triassic period, usually dated to some 213-248 million years
ago.
213-248 Million Year Old Shoe Sole Print from
Nevada 681
Another very
controversial find is the so-called Meistner shoeprint, discovered
in 1968 in Utah by William J. Meister, an amateur fossil hunter and
collector. This shoeprint was found in Cambrian shale near the town
of Antelope Spring, Utah. The print occurs in rock that is over 505
million years old. Of course, as Cremo and Thompson point out, the
find was quickly dismissed, as scientists closed ranks and came up
with a variety of sound bites attacking “creationists” and “flat
earthers,” even after one evolutionary biologist admitted he had
not actually seen the print firsthand himself. While this is not
the place to survey the controversy surrounding this incredible
print,682 Cremo and Thompson
admit that the case remains ambiguous, but unlike the dogmatists in
the university science faculties, they “suggest... that the
resources of empirical investigation have not yet been exhausted
and that the Meistner print is worthy of further research.“683
The Meistner Shoe Print: If Genuine, this Fossilized Shoe
Print would be over 505 Million Years Old684
