The political footprint of ‘settled science’

Last week, science writer Christopher Plain published a story in the online magazine The Debrief (which describes its subject matter as “Science, Tech and Defense for the Rebelliously Curious”) about fossilized human footprints found in a desiccated lakebed in White Sands, New Mexico. According to the article, radiocarbon dating places the age of the footprints at 23,000 years old. This would be during the “Last Glacial Maximum,” a time when glaciers were at their southernmost extent over what is now North America, northern Europe and Asia -- and 10,000 years earlier than contemporary theorists claim human beings were in the Americas.