Texas Trove of Artifacts Blasts Theory on Arrival of First North Americans
Scientists have found that humans arrived in North American 2,500 years earlier than previously thought, exploding an 80-year-old assumption about who settled the continent.
The Clovis people, known for their distinctive spear points, had been thought to be first, said Michael Waters, a professor of anthropology at Texas A&M University in College Station. The discovery of ancient tool remnants, knives and spears, reported today in the journal Science, shows that the Clovis weren’t the earliest to migrate into North America, said Waters, one of the study’s authors.
The artifacts found in Texas show that human beings may have been in North America as early as 15,500 years ago, researchers said. The group reported finding almost 16,000 artifacts from that period. The site, located near Austin, is 2,500 years older than previous North American discoveries.
“It’s basically time to abandon once and for all the Clovis first model, and develop a new model for the peopling of the Americas,” said Waters, who is also the director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M, at a March 23 briefing.
Scientists had been aware that there were problems with the Clovis model, Waters said. First, there were six other settlements in South America that existed at the same time as the Clovis people. Second, there was no Clovis technology in Northeast Asia, suggesting it was developed in the Americas.
Today’s finding suggests that people were in North America earlier than previously thought, grew in population size, experimented with the stone available to them and developed the typical Clovis points. The new material was first found in 2006.
Tool-Making Remnants
The majority of the findings were flakes and chips from making tools or sharpening them, the report said. In addition, 56 tools were found, including knives, choppers, and pre-forms for spears.
The artifacts were dated using optically stimulated luminescence, a method of showing when minerals were last exposed to sunlight. The dating was done over a four-year period, said Steven Forman, another study author and a professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois in Chicago.
The people were probably mobile hunter-gatherers, who deposited artifacts at the site, where they may have repeatedly made camp, Waters said.
“It’s just a wonderful environment,” Waters said. “So, you know, it’s not surprising people came back time and time again.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Elizabeth Lopatto in New York at elopatto@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reg Gale at rgale5@bloomberg.net.
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