The White Sands footprints are likely not the oldest evidence of human presence in the Americas that will ever be found.

They are the oldest robust, multiply-confirmed, physically direct evidence currently known.

But the logic of the geological and biological record suggests that additional evidence — older, from different locations, preserved by different circumstances — may exist and may eventually be found.

Each new finding will be evaluated against the standards of evidence that the White Sands case has helped establish: independent dating methods, clear identification of the evidence as human in origin, careful treatment of the implications for migration models, and respectful engagement with Indigenous communities whose histories are part of the story that the evidence illuminates.

The search that White Sands reinvigorated is the oldest question in American science: how long have people been here?

The answer keeps moving backward in time.

Where it will eventually settle is not yet known.

But the mud of an ancient lake in New Mexico, pressed by human feet twenty-three thousand years ago, is pointing the way.