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Human footprints that are 40,000 years old have been discovered beside an ancient lake in Mexico. This means that human beings were in the Americas 30,000 years earlier than archeologists once thought.

Robert Adler writes in the July 9-15 issue of New Scientist that archeologists Chris Stringer and Silvia Gonzalez discovered the footprints in a quarry near the town of Puebla in ash from a nearby volcano. The fossilized footprints were made when the humans walked along the shore of a lake. They were submerged when the water level rose and thus were preserved in the lake sediment. Some of them were made by children. The scientists were able to date the prints because they found shells in the sediment, which have been carbon-dated to 38,000 years ago.
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Unlike the recent footprints discovered in Mexico, a skull fragment discovered in a peat bog in Germany that was said to be 36,000 years old?the “missing link” between Neanderthals and modern man?has been found to be a fraud. This isn’t the first time this has happened.

Luke Harding writes in The Guardian that German anthropologist Reiner Protsch von Zieten has admitted falsifying the dating of important fossils. His discoveries changed much of our knowledge about ancient history?finding they are fake will change this even more. Protsch’s fake fossils seemed to prove that modern humans and Neanderthals co-existed, and perhaps even interbred.
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In fourteenth century Florence, Piero della Francesca created what has become a famous portrait of a pregnant Madonna. Italian architect Renzo Manetti says this painting reveals secrets of the Knights Templar, who were active in Florence during that period. According to Manetti, the pregnant Madonna, with her hand on her swelling stomach, is the symbol of the hidden (pagan) truths that the Knights knew. And people are flocking to Naples to see a statue of Mary that turns flesh-colored and moves. The way the statue changes has been captured on video; however, Bishop Giovanni Rinaldi insists it’s a trick of the light.
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Obese Americans who lose a lot of weight also build wealth as they drop pounds. A new study found that the link between weight loss and wealth gains was particularly strong among white women. Black women and white men also got richer as they lost weight, but not as much as did white women. The wealth of Black men was basically unaffected by their weight. Anne Strieber, who recently lost 100 pounds, asks: “Is this because you have more energy when you?re thinner or because society sees thin people as more legitimate, and thus more hirable?”
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