Clovis Man

The Clovis culture is a prehistoric Paleoamerican culture, named for distinct stone and bone tools found in close association with Pleistocene fauna, particularly two mammoths, at Blackwater Locality No. 1 near Clovis, New Mexico, in 1936 and 1937 (though Paleoindian artifacts had been found at the site since the 1920s). It appears around 11,500–11,000 uncalibrated years before present (YBP)"Clovis Culture" entry in the ''Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology'': "9,500–9,000 BC". at the end of the last glacial period and is characterized by the manufacture of " Clovis points" and distinctive bone and ivory tools. Archaeologists' most precise determinations at present suggest this radiocarbon age is equal to roughly 13,200 to 12,900 calendar years ago.

The only human burial that has been directly associated with tools from the Clovis culture included the remains of an infant boy researchers named Anzick-1. Paleogenetic analyses of Anzick-1's ancient nuclear, mitochondrial, and Y-chromosome DNA reveal that Anzick-1 is closely related to modern Native American populations, which lends support to the Beringia hypothesis for the settlement of the Americas.

The Clovis culture was replaced by several more localized regional societies from the Younger Dryas cold-climate period onward. Post-Clovis cultures include the Folsom tradition, Gainey, Suwannee-Simpson, Plainview- Goshen, Cumberland, and Redstone. Each of these is thought to derive directly from Clovis, in some cases apparently differing only in the length of the fluting on their projectile points. Although this is generally held to be the result of normal cultural change through time, numerous other reasons have been suggested as driving forces to explain changes in the archaeological record, such as the Younger Dryas postglacial climate change, which exhibited numerous faunal extinctions.

After the discovery of several Clovis sites in eastern North America in the 1930s, the Clovis people came to be regarded as the first human inhabitants who created a widespread culture in the Americas, and the ancestors of most of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. However, several archaeological discoveries have cast significant doubt on the Clovis-first theory, including sites such as Cactus Hill in Virginia, Paisley Caves in the Summer Lake Basin of Oregon, the Topper site in Allendale County South Carolina, Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Pennsylvania, the Friedkin site in Texas, Cueva Fell in Chile, White Sands site in New Mexico, and especially Monte Verde also in Chile. The oldest claimed human archaeological site in the Americas is the Pedra Furada hearths in Brazil, controversially dated to 19,000 to 30,000 years before the earliest Clovis sites.

Description

A hallmark of the toolkit associated with the Clovis culture is the distinctively shaped, fluted-stone spear point, known as the Clovis point. The Clovis point is bifacial and typically fluted on both sides. Clovis tools were produced during a roughly 300-year period. Archaeologists do not agree on whether the widespread presence of these artifacts indicates the proliferation of a single people, or the adoption of a superior technology by diverse population groups.

The culture is named after artifacts found between 1932 and 1936 at Blackwater Locality No. 1, an archaeological site between the towns of Clovis and Portales, New Mexico. These finds were deemed especially important due to their direct association with mammoth species and the extinct ''Bison antiquus''. The ''in situ'' finds of 1936 and 1937 included most of four stone Clovis points, two long bone points with impact damage, stone blades, a portion of a Clovis blade core, and several cutting tools made on stone flakes. Clovis sites have since been identified throughout much of the contiguous United States, as well as in Mexico and parts of Central America, and even into northern South America.

Clovis people are generally accepted to have hunted mammoths, as well as extinct bison, mastodon, gomphotheres, sloths, tapir, camelops, horse, and other smaller animals. More than 125 species of plants and animals are known to have been used by Clovis people in the portion of the Western Hemisphere they inhabited.

The oldest Clovis site in North America is believed to be El Fin del Mundo in northwestern Sonora, Mexico, discovered during a 2007 survey. It features occupation dating around 13,390 calibrated years BP. In 2011, remains of gomphotheres were found; the evidence suggests that humans killed two of them there. Also, the Aubrey site in Denton County, Texas, produced an almost identical radiocarbon date.

Disappearance of Clovis

The most commonly held perspective on the end of the Clovis culture is that a decline in the availability of megafauna, combined with an overall increase in a less mobile population, led to local differentiation of lithic and cultural traditions across the Americas. After this time, Clovis-style fluted points were replaced by other fluted-point traditions (such as the Folsom culture) with an essentially uninterrupted sequence across North and Central America. An effectively continuous cultural adaptation proceeds from the Clovis period through the ensuing Middle and Late Paleoindian periods.

Whether the Clovis culture drove the mammoth, and other species, to extinction via overhunting – the Pleistocene overkill hypothesis – is still an open, and controversial, theory. It has also been hypothesized that the Clovis culture experienced decline in the wake of the Younger Dryas cold phase. This "cold shock", lasting roughly 1,500 years, affected many parts of the world, including North America. This appears to have been triggered by a vast amount of meltwater – possibly from Lake Agassiz – emptying into the North Atlantic, disrupting the thermohaline circulation.

The Younger Dryas Impact hypothesis, or Clovis Comet hypothesis, originally proposed that a large air burst or earth impact from a comet or comets initiated the Younger Dryas cold period about 12,900  BP calibrated (10,900 ¹⁴C uncalibrated) years ago. This hypothesis has been largely contradicted, with research showing that most of the original findings cannot be replicated by other scientists. This hypothesis is criticized because of its misinterpretation of data and the lack of confirmatory evidence.

However, proponents of the hypothesis have responded, disputing the accusation of irreproducibility of their findings. In 2013, a group from Harvard reported finding a layer of increased platinum (Pt) composition exactly at the Younger Dryas onset in a Greenland ice core, followed in 2017 by a report that the Pt spike had been also been found at an additional 11 continental Younger Dryas sites.

Discovery

On 29 August 1927, the first in place evidence of Pleistocene humans seen by multiple archaeologists in the Americas was discovered near Folsom, New Mexico. At this site they found the first ''in situ'' Folsom point with the extinct ''B. antiquus'' bones. This confirmation of a human presence in the Americas during the Pleistocene inspired many people to start looking for evidence of early humans. Another earlier example at Folsom was discovered by George McJunkin, a cowboy, who found an ancient bison (''Bison antiquus'', an extinct relative of the American bison) skeleton in 1908 after a flash flood. The site was first excavated in 1926 under the direction of Harold Cook and Jesse Figgins.

In 1929, 19-year-old Ridgely Whiteman, who had been closely following the excavations in nearby Folsom in the newspaper, discovered the Clovis site near the Blackwater Draw in eastern New Mexico. Despite several earlier Paleoindian discoveries, the best documented evidence of the Clovis complex was collected and excavated between 1932 and 1937 near Clovis, New Mexico, by a crew under the direction of Edgar Billings Howard until 1935 and later by John Cotter from the Academy of Natural Sciences/University of Pennsylvania. Howard's crew left their excavation in Burnet Cave, New Mexico,
(the first truly professionally excavated Clovis site) in August, 1932, and visited Whiteman and his Blackwater Draw site. By November, Howard was back at Blackwater Draw to investigate additional finds from a construction project.

The ''American Journal of Archaeology'' (January–March, 1932 V36 #1) in its "Archaeological Notes" mentions E. B. Howard's work in Burnet Cave, including the discovery of extinct fauna and a "Folsom type" point 4 ft below a Basketmaker burial. This brief mention of the Clovis point found in place predates any work done at the Dent site in Colorado. The reference is made to a slightly earlier article on Burnet Cave in ''The University Museum Bulletin'' of November, 1931.

The first report of professional work at the Blackwater Draw Clovis site was published in the November 25th issue of ''Science News'' (V22 #601) in 1932. The publications on Burnet Cave and Blackwater Draw directly contradict statements by several authors (for example see Haynes 2002:56 The Early Settlement of North America) that Dent, Colorado was the first excavated Clovis site. The Dent site, in Weld County, Colorado, was simply a fossil mammoth excavation in 1932. The first Dent Clovis point was found on November 5, 1932, and the ''in situ'' point was found July 7, 1933. The ''in situ'' Clovis point from Burnet Cave was excavated in late August, 1931 (and was reported in early 1932).

Another Clovis burial site was found in Montana in 1968. It contained the remains of a two-year-old child known as Anzick-1 or the Anzick boy. Analysis of DNA recovered from the remains indicates that Anzick-1 is more closely related to all of the indigenous peoples of the Americas than to any other group.

Clovis Paleo-Indians

Available genetic data show that the Clovis people are the direct ancestors of roughly 80% of all living Native American populations in North and South America, with the remainder descended from ancestors who entered in later waves of migration. As reported in February 2014, DNA from the 12,600-year-old remains of Anzick boy, found in Montana, has affirmed this connection to the peoples of the Americas. In addition, this DNA analysis affirmed genetic connections back to ancestral peoples of northeast Asia. This adds weight to the theory that peoples migrated across a land bridge from Siberia to North America.

Clovis First

This theory, known as "Clovis First", had been the predominant hypothesis among archaeologists in the second half of the 20th century. According to Clovis First, the people associated with the Clovis culture were the first inhabitants of the Americas. The primary support for this claim was that no solid evidence of pre-Clovis human habitation had been found. According to the standard accepted theory, the Clovis people crossed the Beringia land bridge over the Bering Strait from Siberia to Alaska during the ice age when there was a period of lowered sea levels, then made their way southward through an ice-free corridor east of the Rocky Mountains, located in present-day Western Canada, as the glaciers retreated.

This hypothesis came to be challenged by ongoing studies that suggest pre-Clovis human occupation of the Americas. In 2011, following the excavation of an occupation site at Buttermilk Creek, Texas, a group of scientists identified the existence "of an occupation older than Clovis." At the site in Buttermilk, archaeologists discovered evidence of hunter-gatherer grouping living at and making projectile spear points, blades, choppers, and other stone tools. The tools found were made from a local chert and could be dated back to as early as 15,000 years ago.

According to researchers Michael Waters and Thomas Stafford of Texas A&M University, new radiocarbon dates place Clovis remains from the continental United States in a shorter time window beginning 450 years later than the previously accepted threshold (13,200 to 12,900 BP).

Recently, the scientific consensus has changed to acknowledge the presence of pre-Clovis cultures in the Americas, ending the "Clovis first" consensus.

Alternatives to Clovis First

Evidence of human habitation before Clovis

There have been a great number of archaeological findings across the Americas that date the arrival of humans to the Americas as prior to 11,500–11,000 uncalibrated years before present (YBP). The Buttermilk Creek Complex, located in Salado, Texas, is a site where over 15,000 artifacts have been found. These artifacts are composed of a variety of small stone tool assemblages. These artifacts stratigraphically underlie previously excavated Clovis assemblages, meaning that they were deposited prior to the Clovis artifacts. These pre-Clovis assemblages are dated to between 13,200 and 15,500 years ago.

Predecessors of the Clovis people may have migrated south along the North American coastlines, although arguments exist for many migrations along several different routes. Radiocarbon dating of the Monte Verde site in Chile places Clovis-like culture there as early as 18,500 to 14,500 years ago. Remains found at the Channel Islands of California place coastal Paleoindians there 12,500 years ago. This suggests that the Paleoindian migration could have spread more quickly along the Pacific coastline, proceeding south, and that populations that settled along that route could have then begun migrations eastward into the continent.

The Pedra Furada sites in Brazil include a collection of rock shelters, which were used for thousands of years by diverse human populations. The first excavations yielded artifacts with carbon-14 dates of 48,000 to 32,000 years BP. Repeated analyses have confirmed this dating, carrying the range of dates up to 60,000 BP. The best-analyzed archaeological levels are dated between 32,160 ± 1000 years BP and 17,000 ± 400 BP. These claims have become an issue of contention between North American archaeologists and their South American and European counterparts, who disagree on whether it is conclusively proven to be an older human site.

In 2004, worked stone tools were found at Topper in South Carolina that have been dated by radiocarbon techniques possibly to 50,000 years ago. But, there is significant scholarly dispute regarding these dates. Scholars agree that evidence of humans at the Topper Site date back to 22,900 cal yr BP.

A more substantiated claim is that of Paisley Caves, Oregon, where rigorous carbon-14 and genetic testing appear to indicate that humans related to modern Native Americans were present in the caves over 1000 ¹⁴C years before the earliest evidence of Clovis. Traces and tools made by another people, the "Western Stemmed" tradition, were documented.

A study published in ''Science'' presents strong evidence that humans occupied sites in Monte Verde, Chile, at the tip of South America, as early as 13,000 years ago. If this is true, then humans must have entered North America long before the Clovis culture – perhaps 16,000 years ago.

The Tlapacoya site in Mexico is located along the base of a volcanic (remnant) hill on the shore of the former Lake Chalco. Seventeen excavations along the base of Tlapacoya Hill between 1956 and 1973 uncovered piles of disarticulated bones of bear and deer that appeared to have been butchered, plus 2,500 flakes and blades presumably from the butchering activities, plus one unfluted spear point. All were found in the same stratum containing three circular hearths filled with charcoal and ash. Bones of many other animal species were also present, including horses and migratory waterfowl. Two uncalibrated radiocarbon dates on carbon from the hearths came in around 24,000 and 22,000 years ago. At another location, a prismatic microblade of obsidian was found in association with a tree trunk radiocarbon dated (uncalibrated) at roughly 24,000 years ago. This obsidian blade has recently been hydration dated by Joaquín García-Bárcena to 22,000 years ago. The hydration results were published in a seminal article that deals with the evidence for pre-Clovis habitation of Mexico.

Other sites, like White Sands National Park, located in New Mexico, also demonstrate archaeological findings that predate Clovis populations. In White Sands, excavated surfaces uncovered multiple in situ human footprints that were stratigraphically located between layers of material that were radio carbon dated to be from between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago. The findings from this site predate previous theories about the timeline of human migration of the Americas by several thousand years. Archaeologist working on the site believe that their findings indicates that humans had been present in the region since 23,000 years prior. This would mean that humans were occupying North America during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) – a theory that had previously been dismissed.

Though it is not currently the "widely-accepted theory", these archaeological sites point support alternative theories of early human migration such as a coastal migration route or the Solutrean hypothesis. This archaeological evidence is also supported by genetic mapping of ancestral mitochondrial DNA.

Archaeological sites that predate Clovis that are well documented include:
* Bluefish Caves, Yukon, Canada (24,000 yr BP)
* White Sands National Park, New Mexico, USA; (21,000-23,000 BP)
* Pedra Furada, Piauí, Brazil (10,500–12,000 yr BP; possibly >50,000 yr BP)
* Topper, South Carolina, US (16,000–20,000 yr BP; possibly 50,000 yr BP)
* Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Pennsylvania, US (16,000 yr BP)
* Buttermilk Creek Complex, Salado, Texas, US (15,500 ¹⁴C yr BP)
* Cactus Hill, Virginia, US (15,070 ¹⁴C yr BP)
* Monte Verde, Chile (18,500 to 14,800 ¹⁴C yr BP)Madsen 157
* Saltville (archaeological site), Virginia, US (14,510 ¹⁴C yr BP)
* Taima-Taima, Venezuela (14,000 yr BP)
* Manis Mastodon site, Sequim, Washington, US (13,800 yr BP)
* Connley Caves, Oregon, US (13,000 yr BP)
* Page–Ladson site, Florida, US (14,550 cal yr BP)
* Lapa do Boquete, Brazil (12,070 ±170 ¹⁴C yr BP)
* Paisley Caves, Oregon, US (14,300 cal yr BP)
* Tanana Valley, Alaska, US (13,000–14,000 cal yr BP)
* El Abra, Colombia (12,460 ±140 ¹⁴C yr BP)
* Nenana Valley, Alaska, US (12,000 yr BP)
* Tibitó

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases