Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: this is the Artifact, a short form series from Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind, focusing in on particular objects, ideas
Speaker 1: and moments in time. And did those feet in ancient
Speaker 1: time walk upon England's mountains green? And was the Holy
Speaker 1: Lamb of God on England's pleasant pastures scene? Those are
Speaker 1: the stirring words of English Romantic Age poet William Blake,
Speaker 1: inspired by an apocryphal tale of a young Jesus of
Speaker 1: Nazareth visiting the British Isles. The same sense of wonder
Speaker 1: and dubious believability may also be applied to the so
Speaker 1: called Meister footprint, which would seem to suggest that feet
Speaker 1: in ancient time walked upon a bunch of trilobytes during
Speaker 1: the Cambrian period. To be clear, this is quite impossible,
Speaker 1: but let's discuss the details of the fine. Amateur fossil
Speaker 1: hunter William Meister discovered the so called footprints in the
Speaker 1: Wheeler Shale fossil site in nineteen Breaking open a slab
Speaker 1: of rock, he discovered a print that he took to
Speaker 1: be a human sandal print complete with a trilobite crushed
Speaker 1: under the heel. These findings were championed by creationists eager
Speaker 1: to poke holes in geologic and evolutionary history, because, if
Speaker 1: even remotely true, the print would mean that sandals clad humans,
Speaker 1: if not a time traveling Jeffrey Lebowski or Christ himself,
Speaker 1: walked about in the Cambrian muck. But of course this
Speaker 1: is not a sandal print. As pointed out by geologist
Speaker 1: William Stokes in Tripping Over to Trilobite, a study of
Speaker 1: the Meister tracks by Ernest C. Conrad, the Meister specimen
Speaker 1: was the result of a natural rock fracture known as
Speaker 1: a spawling. Furthermore, as Conrad points out, the fracture only
Speaker 1: resembles a sandal print in the most superficial way possible quote,
Speaker 1: the specimen was in no sense fate, and I am
Speaker 1: sure it was found exactly as reported Stokes as quoted
Speaker 1: as writing quote. But I, along with my geologist friends,
Speaker 1: are equally sincere in my belief that it is an
Speaker 1: accidental natural product and not a footprint. And again, the
Speaker 1: fossil in question is a good five hundred million years old.
Speaker 1: Humans only split from their ancestors between two hundred thousand
Speaker 1: and three hundred thousand years ago. The oldest sandals yet
Speaker 1: recovered are a mere ten thousand years old, discovered in
Speaker 1: oregons Fort Rock Cave. The Maister Print is not technically
Speaker 1: an artifact, nor is it evidence of one, but it
Speaker 1: does serve as an interesting illustration of humanity's willingness to
Speaker 1: redesired answers in the rock and jump to human centric interpretations.
Speaker 1: Yeah tune in for additional episodes of the Artifact each week,
Speaker 1: and as always, you can email us at contact at
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