The oldest human footprints discovered to date have been confirmed to be those excavated on top of the Roccamonfina volcano in Italy in 2003. The reason it took so long to confirm them is that the teams responsible for establishing their age had to use a dating process known as argon-argon dating, where two types of radioactive argon are used to measure the age of cooled molten rock, so as to determine when eruptions occurred.
 

Geologists at the University of Padova in Italy first presented their find at a convention in 2003, after the foot impressions in the ground were discovered by amateur archaeologists. At that time, the prints were believed to be anywhere between 385,000 and 325,000 years old, but advanced dating techniques have since established for certain that they are approximately 345,000 years old. The margin of error for this dating is plus/minus 6000 years.
 

According to anthropologists, the tracks undoubtedly belong to Homo heidelbergensis, a "proto-human", thought to have lived in southern Europe about 800,000 years ago. Their first remains were unearthed near Heidelberg, in Germany, in 1907. Approximately 500 millennia ago, they settled in central Europe and eastern England, as proven by various stone tools found in graves.

Italian scientists believe that further digs in the area should reveal an ancient path of sorts, as indicated by the fact that the already-discovered trails lead both to and from the mountain. It's possible that the path was used for access to a village or some other form of settlement. The distance between the prints suggest that the early humans using them were not running from something, but walking normally, which would suggest they felt safe in the area. The tracks could only be preserved because some H. heidelbergensis, thousands of years ago, took a stroll on the top of a volcano that had just erupted. Their footprints were engraved on the rock for eternity.