Do you think your shoes leave quite the impression? A group of early humans related to "pioneer man" beg to differ. Any particular reason why? Well yes, their age-old footprints were recently discovered in untouched ancient estuary mud on Happisburgh, England's east coast. They laid untouched, unbothered and hidden for anywhere between 800,000 to 1 million years until this past May, when they were discovered by Martin Bates, an archaeologist from Trinity St. David's University.

Nicholas Aston, the curator of the world-renowned British Museum, said they found the prints by pure chance. The Happisburgh shoreline is eroding at a quicker rate than normal and normally that's a bad thing. However this erosion leads to previous layers of sediment being uncovered for a brief period of time before the sea washes them away. These footprints just happened to be a part of the that particular sediment layer. This particular layer of sediment looked quite unusual to Mayer, perhaps because of the multiple tiny impressions it contained.

Upon further inspection it was decided that these impressions were in fact footprints belonging to two children and a grown male. They might have been a familial unit according to Isabelle De Groote, a specialist who worked on the Happisburgh site.

"These individuals traveling together, it's likely that they were somehow related," she said.

She, along with the other scientists, also concluded that these were the oldest footprints found outside of Africa!

Clive Gamble, a fellow archeologist unrelated to the project had this to say about the discovery.

"It's just so tangible," he stated. "This is the closest we've got to seeing the people.

"When I heard about it, it was like hearing the first line of (William Blake's hymn) 'Jerusalem' -- 'And did those feet, in ancient time, walk upon England's mountains green?' Well, they walked upon its muddy estuary."

Another archaeologist, Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum, had this to say:

"This makes us rethink our feelings about the capacity of these early people, that they were coping with conditions somewhat colder than the present day," he said.

"Maybe they had cultural adaptations to the cold we hadn't even thought were possible 900,000 years ago. Did they wear clothing? Did they make shelters, windbreaks and so on? Could they have they have the use of fire that far back?" he asked.

The footprints were dated using geological positioning in relation to fossils found in the surrounding area.

How shocked would you be if you found ancient footprints baked into your backyard? Let me know in the comments section below.