What is the significance of Clovis culture?
Howard named these people the Clovis culture, after the nearby town of Clovis, New Mexico. To this day, the Clovis people are the oldest recognized culture in the Western Hemisphere. Evidence of the Clovis culture can be found across nearly all of North America from 12,000-11,000 years BP (before present).
What are the characteristics of the Clovis culture?
The Clovis culture takes its name from the town in New Mexico, where the striking stone projectile point characteristic of the tradition was first found. It’s distinctive characteristics include a central groove, or flute, along both of its faces and finely worked edges.
What is the Clovis only theory?
The Clovis First hypothesis states that no humans existed in the Americas prior to Clovis, which dates from 13,000 years ago, and that the distinct Clovis lithic technology is the mother technology of all other stone artifact types later occurring in the New World.
What is a Clovis artifact?
Clovis points, which were made early in the Paleoindian period, have been found throughout North America, most often associated with the bones of mammoths. Folsom points were made later, and they are found mostly in the central and western parts of the continent, often in association with the bones of bison.
Where did the Clovis culture come from?
South America The Clovis culture was named after flint spearheads found in the 1930s at a site in Clovis, New Mexico. Clovis sites have been identified throughout the contiguous United States, as well as in Mexico and Central America.
What is the Clovis period?
Radiocarbon dating had previously shown the Clovis period to range from 11,500 to 10,900 radiocarbon years ago (about 13,300 to 12,800 calendar years ago), giving the culture several hundred years to reach South America.
When did the Clovis culture begin?
What is the Clovis era?
Ancient people of North America’s Clovis culture migrated to South America roughly 11,000 years ago, then mysteriously vanished, researchers have discovered. In a new study, researchers analyzed DNA from 49 people living over a span of 10,000 years in Belize, Brazil, the Central Andes and southern South America.
Why are the Clovis people important to archaeologists?
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.
What are the problems of the Clovis First theory?
The most contentious issue in American archaeology is the so-called Clovis orthodoxy or Clovis first theory. The argument went that humans could not have come into America before the Clovis points made their appearance because the way through was blocked by ice.
What’s a Clovis point and what does it tell us about the way the North American continent was settled by human beings?
The first clear evidence of human activity in North America are spear heads like this. They are called Clovis points. These spear tips were used to hunt large game. The period of the Clovis people coincides with the extinction of mammoths, giant sloth, camels and giant bison in North America.
Is Clovis first debunked?
Clovis debunked: America’s first settlers did not take the ice-free corridor. The “Clovis First” hypothesis for human settlement of North and South America has just been debunked. Where do we go from here? Researchers long assumed ancient humans entered North America via an ice-free corridor about 13,000 years ago.
What are Clovis points and how do they help archeologists identify sites?
Over most of North America, 12,000 to 13,000 years ago, ancestral Indigenous people were making distinctive fluted projectile points known as “Clovis points.” Clovis points are easily recognized because of their large size, their exquisite craftsmanship, and the beautiful stones toolmakers chose for them.
How was the Clovis culture discovered?
Clovis sites have been identified throughout the contiguous United States, as well as in Mexico and Central America. The Clovis, widely believed to have been mammoth hunters, likely arrived via the Bering land bridge that once linked Asia and Alaska. They then spread rapidly southward.
What were Clovis points and what were they made from?
Clovis points are wholly distinctive. Chipped from jasper, chert, obsidian and other fine, brittle stone, they have a lance-shaped tip and (sometimes) wickedly sharp edges. Extending from the base toward the tips are shallow, concave grooves called “flutes” that may have helped the points be inserted into spear shafts.