A team of scientists from Curtin University in Australia this month visited the area of Trachilos in Kissamos, to make a new study of the footprints of a bipedal being dated about 6 million years ago, which are considered the oldest in the world associated with a human ancestor.

The expedition took place from 12th to 21st May, in collaboration with the Natural History Museum of the University of Crete and the Ephorate of Palaeoanthropology and Speleology of the ministry of Culture, and with the participation of scientists Giorgios Fasoulas and Emmanouil Athanasiou, who were members of the original team who investigated the archaeological relics.

The research team carried out a new digital analysis of the tracks with modern techniques, with the aim of arriving at a more accurate assessment of their age and origin, further enhancing international recognition of their importance.

The mayor of Kissamos, Giorgos Mylonakis, and the deputy mayor for Culture, Giorgos Makrakis, had a meeting with the scientists where there was a discussion of the need to protect and show off this unique monument to the natural and developmental history of mankind.
(Haniotika Nea, 24-05-25)

The revelation of the discovery of 5.7 million year old footprints in the area of Trachilos Beach just west of the port of Kissamos caused a sensation in the scientific world, since they ran counter to prevailing theories of the spread of our human ancestors from the African continent. Since then numerous arguments have been adduced to prove that the prints were not hominid in origin, not of a bipedal creature, or not even footprints. In 2019, two years after the first publication of a research paper reporting the finding, the local online paper biskotto.gr published an account of the discovery and sought to place it in the wider context of the movements of Man’s antecedents during prehistoric times.

The first steps of man (?) in Kissamos

Some 50 traces of a bipedal being which had been imprinted in some soft material, or on a river bank or seashore, were discovered by chance in 2002 by the Polish palaeontologist Gerard Gierlinski and were first studied systematically by his pupil Grzegorz Niedzwiedzki in 2010. Scientific publication of this study took place in the summer of 2017.

Shortly after the research about the footprints was published, eight prints were chiselled out of the rock and stolen. The police, acting on local information, were able to trace the stolen relics, first to a farm in Kissamos and thence to Thessaloniki, with one of the original researchers, Giorgios Fasoulas, making it known that as the imprints had been measured and their location determined using laser technology, it had been possible to create an exact profile of the find so that they could be identified without any possibility of error,

This was the second discovery made in 2017 to cast doubt on the theory of man’s exodus from Africa, since earlier the same year another team of researchers had reinterpreted a discovery of relics of the 7.2 million years old Graecopithecus in Greece and Bulgaria, classifying them as hominid, although this was later disputed by other scientists.

During the period in which the Trachilos footprints were formed, the region presented a very different picture from what it is now. The Sahara did not exist, the savannah reached as far as North Africa, while Crete had not yet separated from mainland Greece – which meant that the first humans could have moved more easily between Africa and Europe. However, from the time of the appearance of Graecopithecus and our bipedal ancestor at Trachilos until the first appearance of the Homo species in Eurasia at least 4 million years had intervened, with the first “European”, Homo ergaster or erectus, at Dmanisi in Georgia, and Homo antecessor or Homo heidelbergensis, establishing themselves on the Old Continent around 1 million years ago.

The first hominid relic found in Greece was the skull of a Homo heidelbergensis in the Petralona cave south of Thessaloniki, which is dated to some 150,000 years ago, although there are finds which date the presence of hominids in the Aegean to some 500,000 years earlier, such as at Lesbos.

How did the first hominids arrive in Crete?
Crete is customarily classified an “oceanic” island as it has been surrounded by sea for the past 5 million years, and certainly throughout the Pleistocene (2.58 million to 11,700 years ago), therefore for a human population to arrive there, they must have crossed the sea and not just come on foot as did Graecopithecus.

Until recently the movements by sea were chronologically assigned to the Upper Palaeolithic (50,000 to 12,000 years ago). During about the past ten years, a series of archaeological research programmes have brought to light discoveries which prove that Crete was inhabited during the Pleistocene. Surface surveys carried out by the University of Crete at Gavdos were the first activity to throw up tools made of flint, limestone and quartz which have been dated to different phases of the Palaeolithic, while on the opposite shore of the Lybian Sea, at Loutro, large cutting tools of limestone have been found.

Surface surveys by Providence College (Rhode Island) at different points in South Rethymnon between the beaches of Plakias and Preveli brought Crete into the forefront of world archaeological interest with the discovery of Palaeolithic remains from 130,000 years ago. New discoveries chiselled out of milky quartz of the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic period were found in Eastern Crete, notably at Mochlos (Sitia).

The research team at Plakias attributed the toolmaking techniques of the area which is thought to be Acheulean or Mode 2, to Homo erectus and dated its early transfer to around 1.0 to 0.8 million years ago. This particular view has attracted many criticisms as the finds do not have enough similarities with corresponding ones in Africa and Southern Asia, while in the Cretan regions there are no human fossils from this period which would support this hypothesis. Moreover both Gavdos and Crete are at such a distance from the northern shores of Africa (nearly 200 km), that the likelihood of intentional sea travel from Africa to Crete seems almost impossible.

What seems much more likely is that humans started moving around 100,000 years ago, since by then early Homo sapiens were spreading from Africa to Eurasia, bearing with them Prepared-core or Mode 3 toolmaking techniques. Also, on mainland Greece, relics of Homo neanderthalensis have been found in the Mani, in the caves of Lakonia, Apidima and Kalamakia, which are considered contemporary or almost contemporary in characteristics and could easily have made the crossing between the Peloponnese and Crete.

The movement from the Peloponnese towards Kythera and Antikythera would most probably have had as its destination the valley of Kissamos which would have formed between the Gramvousa and Rodopou peninsulas, with which there is still visual contact today. In 2014 there was a simulation of the journey from Kythera to Crete with a craft made from primary materials which would have been available during the Palaeolithic period, though the addition of a sail made the experiment less authentic.

The gulf of Kissamos and Antikythera would have been even closer to one another during low sea-level periods of the ice ages, making them an ideal destination by sea, because of the favourable conditions for anchorage throughout year. Also the directions of the marine currents facilitate sailing from Antikythera towards Gramvousa and Rodopou, as against the prevailing conditions in the Libyan Sea, which hinder coastal communications even for the distance between Gavdos and Crete.

It therefore seems most likely that material evidence for human presence in Kissamos would be found on the submerged landscape between Gramvousa and Rodopou, in company with the few remaining fish and certainly safer from the thefts and vandalism which were suffered by the traces of our bipedal ancestors.
(www.biskotto.gr, www.alfavita.gr)