Clovis on EARTH Magazine

Speartips point at south-to-north Clovis dispersal

Tue, 03 Jul 2018 11:35:35 -0400

Several routes have been proposed for the first human migrations into North America, with the most widely accepted suggesting a north-to-south traverse through an ice-free corridor east of the Rocky Mountains. But a new analysis of hundreds of spearpoints found across the western U.S. is turning this model on its head. Credit: map: K. Cantner, AGI; photo: Heather Smith.

During the last ice age, long before people first entered North America, much of the Canadian and American Rockies were buried under massive ice sheets. As the ice age waned about 13,000 years ago, an ice-free corridor 1,500-kilometers long and several hundred kilometers wide opened east of the Rocky Mountains.

The first Americans: How and when were the Americas populated?

Thu, 15 Dec 2016 20:27:50 -0500

Archaeologists used to have a tidy story to explain the earliest peopling of the Americas: During the last ice age, when sea levels were much lower, a band of intrepid travelers walked from East Asia, over the Bering land bridge, and into Alaska. From there, they followed an ice-free corridor east of the Canadian Rockies south onto the megafauna-rich plains, eventually spreading throughout North and South America by 11,000 years ago and leaving a trail of finely shaped “Clovis” spear points in their wake.

Underwater archaeology reveals pre-Clovis people butchered mastodon in Florida

Fri, 13 May 2016 13:20:49 -0400

Team member Neil Puckett of Texas A&M University surfaces from the dive excavation in Florida with a 14,550-year-old limb bone from a juvenile mastodon. Credit: Brendan Fenerty.

Following the discovery of stone tool artifacts uncovered near Clovis, N.M., in 1932, archaeologists have thought that the people who made the tools — named the Clovis people — were the first to populate the Americas, about 13,500 years ago. But evidence has been mounting for cultures even older than the Clovis, with archaeological sites and artifacts older than 14,000 years found as far south as Chile and genetic evidence dating the first incursions into North America to about 15,000 years ago. Now, a new study reporting on an underwater archaeological excavation at a site in Florida that dates to 14,550 years ago is adding more evidence of pre-Clovis people, and shedding light on how they may have spread across the Americas.

Down to Earth With: Molecular biologist Sarah L. Anzick

Fri, 03 Oct 2014 14:18:33 -0400

Sarah L. Anzick was 2 years old when a Clovis burial site was found on her family's ranch in 1968. In 2014, she was part of the team that analyzed the infant's genome, which shows that modern Native Americans evolved in the Americas. Credit: Sarah L. Anzick.

In May 1968, when Sarah L. Anzick was 2 years old, the 12,600-year-old remains of a male toddler were discovered at the base of a bluff on her family’s ranch near Wilsall, Mont. The Anzick infant — one of just a handful of ancient skeletons to have been found in North America and the only known Clovis burial site — had been carefully buried with more than 100 stone and bone tools.