Acahualinca footprints
Huellas de Acahualinca
- Date
- c. 4000 BCE-100 CE (discutido) · confidence low
- Place
- Acahualinca, Managua, Nicaragua
- Credited to
- Unidentified pre-Columbian human group; discovered by Earl Flint (1874)
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
A trail of human and animal footprints pressed into wet volcanic ash on the shore of Lake Xolotlán and sealed by later sediments. It is one of the direct testimonies of ancient human occupation on Nicaragua's Pacific side.
The age is much disputed: older estimates spoke of about 6,000 years, and later tephra studies suggest considerably younger dates (around the last millennium BC). The range reflects that uncertainty; the assigned year is only a midpoint.
What it led to
- the first direct archaeological evidence of Managua's prehistory
- the basis of the Acahualinca site museum
- a reference for dating Nicaragua's Pacific volcanic ashes