I Made This (From ArtDaily.org)

NOTE:  I saw the following, quietly gripping story on ArtDaily.org this morning and felt compelled to re-post and share it, supplementing it with additional illustrations from other news sources. This is about the closest I'm likely to get to Mexico, a place I love, in the near future (see the many recent "ghastly crimes" news stories and Here for the reason), but once you read this, you'll know why I delved to this news here.  Three adults and a child, presumably an ancient cave dwelling family in the Valle de Ahuatos -- amazing.  

The cave painting at bottom makes a startling and moving connection.  When I first saw it, I thought immediately of the Ten Thirteen Productions voice-over identification that concludes episodes of The X-Files:

"I Made This."

Specialists from INAH discovered in the Tarahumara Sierra five footprints made by humans some 25,000 years ago. Photo: José Concepción Jiménez/INAH.  

Mexican Archaeologists Find Human Footprints In Chihuahua That May Be 25,000 Years Old

 

MEXICO CITY.-

          Five footprints from human feet, calculated to be between 4,500 and 25,000 years old, were discovered in the Sierra Tarahumara, in Chihuahua. Specialists from Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) said that the foot prints could belong to the first men who lived in this region that is today known as northern Mexico.

          These are the first human footprints that have been found in Chihuahua and once their age has been found out, they will be added to the few footprints from the first people that lived in the American continent that are preserved in Mexico, particularly in Cuatro Ciénegas, Coahuila and in a ranch in Sonora.

Cave wall paintings feature circles and lines. Photo: José Concepción Jiménez/INAH.

          The footprints correspond to three adults and a child that probably lived in the caves that are located in the sierra, in the Valle de Ahuatos, eight kilometers from the town of Creel, in Chihuahua.

          According to morphoscopic analysis, Footprint 1, by its longitude of 26 centimeters, corresponds to the right foot of a male adult, while Footprint 2 belongs to the left foot of another adult, but it being the less defined it has been difficult to identify the sex of the person that made it. Footprint  3 was made by an infant 3 or 4 years old and corresponds to the right foot with a longitude of 17 centimeters.

Chihuahua footprint and measuring instrument/INAH 

     Footprints 4 and 5 are from another adult and represent the only pair that corresponds to the same person, which was found two meters away from Footprint 1; the left foot print (Footprint 4) has a longitude of 23.7 centimeters, while the right (Footprint 5) measures 24.5 centimeters.  These footprints are significant as they have six toes, which may be due a malformation.

Chihuahua footprints, another view/INAH

          Anthropologist José Concepción Jiménez said that the finding of the human footprints was made by an email that a citizen from Chihuahua sent to the Seminario del Hombre Temprano in Mexico, telling about the existence of ancient human fooprints in the Valle de Ahuatos, in the municipality of Bocoyna.

          “We explored the surface to verify the information and we couldn´t find the footprints, it was very hard to find them because they are not easy to identify.

Handout photograph made available on 26 September 2011, shows a cave painting found by specialists of National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), in Sierra Tarahumara, Chihuahua, Mexico. The footprints, that could be 4.500 to 25.000 years old, four are from adults and one from a child. EPA/Jose Concepcion Jimenez / INAH 

Section X-Files

         

          "In their most unusual forms, however, probabilistic verification theories all have recourse to one or another of the pure neutral observation-languages discussed in Section X.  One probabilistic theory  asks that we compare a given scientific theory with all others that might be imagined to fit the same collection of observed data.  Another demands the construction in imagination of all the tests that given scientific theory might conceivably be asked to pass. [1]  Apparently some such construction is necessary for the computation of specific probabilities, absolute or relative, and it is hard to see how such a construction can possibly be achieved.  If, as I have already urged, there can be no scientifically or empirically neutral system of language or concepts, then the proposed construction of alternate tests and theories must proceed from one or another paradigm-based tradition.   Thus restricted it would have no access to all possible experiences or to all possible theories.  As a result, probabilistic theories disguise the verification situation as  much as they illuminate it.  Though that situation does, as they insist, depend upon the comparison of theories and of much wide-spread evidence, the theories and observations at issue are always closely related to ones already in existence.  Verification is like natural selection:  it picks out the most viable among the actual alternatives in a particular historical situation.  Whether that choice is the best that could have been made if still other alternatives had been available or if the data had been of another sort is not a question that can usefully be asked.  There are no tools to employ in seeking answers to it."

[1] For a brief sketch of the main route to probabilistic verification theories, see Ernest Nagel, Principles of the Theory of Probability, Vol. 1, No. 6, of International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, pp. 60-75. 

From:  “The Resolution of Revolutions”, Chapter XII in Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,  Second Edition, Enlarged.   Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1970.

Reader Note:  When we moved into our new house several years ago, I was reunited with all my old books, including college texts such as  Kuhn's work, which had been in storage for a number of years.  Re-reading the section above, it immediately became apparent why I had not missed it.  Astonishingly, I actually read this book once -- the whole thing -- it is even underlined -- and I recall being examined on it on two occasions.  I have bolded certain passages for my (and I hope your) enjoyment because they seem particularly portentous without making a great deal of sense to me.  I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.  Or something like that.

6-4-11  Tulsa, Oklahoma

6-5-11, Nashville, Tennessee 

Duck-Rabbit (used by Thomas S. Kuhn to illustrate the concept of "paradigm shift")