On the 6th of February 2010, during an exploration trip in the coastal mountains east of Latakia city, five amateur explorers including me, have walked in a seasonal flowing river and were surprised to see a unique footprint, as if a Hominid had stitched his foot on a that sedimentary stone.
At first glance, the discoverers thought it was only a carve on limestone that was formed by nature by chance as a result of water erosion in the seasonal flowing river. But a perfect match between it and the human footprint forced us to run a serious discussion of the assumed fact.
In this trace (fig.1) one can see a right foot carved around 2cm deep with the 5 toes, the heel and the curve clearly visible.
Many major obstacles impede the verification of the main causes behind this formation. However, the only way of confirmation it, is to know the type of rock and age of the stone that carries the print. Author, describes it as a movable Dolomiti stone that goes back to Cretaceous sedimentary groups, that were formed on top of the mountains of Lattakia and deposited in the course of the river because of river erosion.
Region morphological data:
The Stone Located on the upper part of the river valley belongs to one of “Alkabir Elshimaly’s” tributaries where it’s surrounded by limestone cliffs containing many caves that were formed by the erosion and deposition of water known as Karstic caves. (fig.2) There, one can expect it’s caused by the dissolution and the re-hardening process of rocks inside.
Unfortunately, these caves have not been posed for any systematic arcilogycal exploration studies, although, its geographical location as much as the paliogeographic value are important enough to raise the attention of any hominid’s settlement
Stone compounds data:
Dolomiti, is a common mineral found throughout the world, its layers appear in Syria attributed to the Triassic, Jurassic, Cretasic, and Polygon periods, where hominids did not exist, but this didn’t prevent us from assuming that the print was made by hominids. It only makes matters more complicated because the period of Dolomite formation is not quite clear and it’s linked Dolomitization property, this property has intrigued scientists for years but in our case the morphological data steer us to think about incomplete dissolution occurrence on the stone before falling into the river flow. This is a characteristic of both Alpine and of Mediterranean caves. Limestone or dolomite are dissolved by corrosive moisture.
Syrian hominid Biography:
A lot of hominid’s remnants were found in the eastern Mediterranean region, “tools flint, original remnants, human activity traces, mostly flint tools were found in “Sitt- Markho” village at the bottom of the river (25 km away from our exploration area). It is attributed to Homoerectus 700,000 years ago. Then human teeth were found by a Swiss-Syrian team of researchers near the village of “El-Kowm” in the central part of Syria, it chronicled about 1’2 Ma (fig.3).
All this data can provide a contentment of its hominids formed of this carve And the Subsequent question becomes:
How can this footprint be made?
Anthropologists are accustomed to find the “hominid foot print” in a limestone in the original place and not cut off and transferred due to the erosion factor and river transport which facilitates the process of determining age and strain and actor. But in this case, we have already determined the kind of stone; “Dolomit” which made things more confusing.
This confusion urges imagination to build a cogent story
and the karstes caves is the place upon which we can anticipate the following scenario:
« Inside a cave, a person approached water to drink, he put his right foot on this stone, the stone was incomplete dissolution. The foot slips a bit and stamped over the stone, then the cave dehydrates and the stone remains to dry and harden again, later the stone falls in the course of the river and takes its present form.»
To prove this scenario or any other, Work needs to analyze the laboratory precision of the stone and expedition team enter the caves and made the necessary survey.
We believe that the Middle East and mainly Syria, which is supposed to be a path for early humans movements from the continent where they existed and developed, must be the most fertile area for explorations that can be grand.
Mudar SALIMEH
