Footprints bring ‘life’ to past

CHILDREN meandered around their parents’ ankles. A man, likely a hunter, dashed through the mud. Somebody dragged a dead animal along the shores of a lake.

Now the footprints they left some 20,000 years ago are giving a fresh perspective on the lives of Australian Aborigines.

Since an Aboriginal park ranger stumbled upon the first print in mid-2003 in Mungo National Park, 500 miles west of Sydney, archaeologists helped by local Aborigines have excavated 457 from the region's shifting sands.