Recent excavations by archaeologists from the Museum Lolland-Falster reveal the discovery of sets of footprints found in Denmark and dating back 5,000 years, providing insight into the early life of the Stone Age coastal residents living in the area.

“This is really quite extraordinary, finding footprints from humans,” said museum archaeologist Terje Stafseth, in a recent statement. “Normally, what we find is their rubbish in the form of tools and pottery, but here, we suddenly have a completely different type of traces from the past, footprints left by a human being.

“We are familiar with animal footprints, but to the best of my knowledge, we have never come across human footprints in Danish Stone Age archaeology before.”

According to Tech Times, the researchers uncovered the two separate sets of footprints on Lolland Island in the Baltic Sea, near the remains of a fishing fence or trap. Researchers suggest that because of their location, the footprints may have likely belonged to fishermen.

“What seems to have happened was that at some point they were moving out to the [fish fence], perhaps to recover it before a storm,” said the museum’s Lars Jensen, according to Live Science. “At one of the posts, there are footprints on each side of the post, where someone had been trying to remove it from the sea bottom.”

With the constant influence of the nearby sea, the finds of a capture system consisting of fixed gillnets on stakes are evidence of the people’s resourcefulness to adapt to their natural environment.

“The investigations have shown that the Stone Age population repeatedly repaired, and actually moved parts of the capture system in order to ensure that it always worked and that it was placed optimally in relation to the coast and currents,” said Stafseth. “We are able to follow the footprints and sense the importance of the capture system, which would have been important for the coastal population to retain a livelihood and therefore worth maintaining.”