Open sesame, Bendy Woodlands!
Gambling giant MGM has announced new discoveries in a drone’s vision of the Ancient Woodlands that has uncovered prints of what it thinks to be the handprints of prehistoric humans who went on to populate the land in the many millennia since the creatures were last seen.
MGM’s director of archaeology, Chris Johnson, believes the prints were made by people who could walk long distances while carrying a projectile point. He said, “Many people see these prints as additional evidence that these animals crossed the water while they were walking. … It’s a clear indication that these animals were not on a straight path, and, therefore, they were carrying a large, heavy projectile.”
MGM will host a contest where contestants attempt to draw the Native American artefacts based on the hints in the documents.
Johnson said, “This is a real opportunity to honor the generations of ancient people that were buried with such care.”
The findings of the designs continue the competition’s “Hunt to Find the Next Great American Treasure,” which has revived passions in the archaeological community for fragments of ancient artifacts that were seen only briefly, but may be crucial to understanding what people lived like thousands of years ago.
The ancient prints may have been made by Naaku Prete Peticco-Cancer. The prehistoric human ancestor became extinct within a decade of when the prints were last seen.
MGM obtained the latest images from a new drone camera that can detect 500 year-old prints. The images, the first of their kind ever taken, were published in a study in the Archaeological Journal of Canada.
The archaeologists behind the revelation could not explain why the prints were so recently left behind but they are confident that it was not natural events: “Places like Namur, Borneo, and South Africa have seen mass excretion of ancient deposits that can be dated based on date of erosion, for example. Namur has seen some of the most significant features that you’ll find along the coast and has seen more natural discontinuities, [a] couple of hundred years ago, than you’ll see in any others,” said Johnson.
“‘Natural’ has nothing to do with the deposits being made. This is a brand new discovery.”
Rearranging the prints would have “laughed in the face of chaos theory.”
You can read more about this incredible discovery on Wired.
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Allison Cooney is a content fellow for NYMag.com. She’s written for The New York Times, Forbes, NPR, The Economist, HuffPost, The Boston Globe, and many others. She is a full-time freelance journalist and lives with her husband and two cats in rural Connecticut.
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