Early human footprints from 3.6 million years ago have been uncovered in Tanzania, revealing the lifestyles of these ancient humans including their sex lives, when they walked together over wet volcanic ash. 

Scientists say that the footprints are most likely from the Australopithecus afarensis. They range from different body sizes, providing crucial clues about this longest-lived early human species.

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The best-known specimen of the A. afarensis is "Lucy," who is a young adult female that used to live in Ethiopia some 3.2 million years ago.

In this new discovery, these footprints reveal a male afarensis walking with smaller females, providing a glimpse of Lucy's ancient lifestyle and even her possible sex life.

According to the lead author of the study, Giorgio Manzi, who is a paleoanthropologist at Italy's Sapienza University of Rome, this rare evidence provides an entirely new perspective on prior findings, indicating that hominins were a group of nomads that were probably fleeing a volcanic eruption and torrential rains.

However, upon investigating these footprints, one of these individuals were larger than everyone else in the group suggesting that this person is a very large male member of the species. Manzi describes how the footprint of this 165-centimeter stature indicate that he is the largest A. afarensis specimen ever identified.

The first preserved ancient footprints were discovered in 1976 in Laetoli, Tanzania. They are estimated to be 3.66 million years old, making it the oldest bipedal footprint evidence.

According to Jacopo Moggi-Cecchi from the University of Florence, this second set of ancient footprints provides a snapshot of the daily lives from this species.

During the excavations, archaeologists and researchers from Tanzania and Italy found this second set of footprints only 150 meters south of the first footprints ever discovered. The team believes that these two groups could know each other.

According to Marco Cherin from the University of Perugia, an initial conclusion would be that this group consisted of one male and two or more females and one or two juveniles, suggesting that the male had more than one female mate, revealing the group's sex lives.

Scientists also believe that this new finding of one male and several other females indicates that their social dynamics was similar to a gorilla model rather than chimpanzees' or modern humans'.

This new study was published in the journal, eLife.