Clovis first theory outdated???

[Paleolution]

I came across this article yesterday. I find it ridiculous to think that the only way North America was populated was from the ice free corridor from Siberia. People have had sea worthy technology for well over 60,000 BP years (Australia was populated during this time), and North America was no exception. How can scientists really think North America was exempt from sea exploration? This recent discovery will really change some things, for one, Clovis is no longer believed to be the original inhabitants in here.
http://www.grindtv.com/outdoor/blog/...000+years+old/

[greywolf22]

Good article. Very interesting.

[turkeytail]

They have found 12,500+ year old sites on the east coast. Nothing in Siberia as advanced as clovis. Solutrean forms from Europe almost a dead ringer. They got Chris Columbus beat by around 12,000 years! Mark.

[CMD]

Paleolution, I was hoping to see more photos of the points, so thanks for the link.  Here's a more detailed description of the discovery:

http://www.pasthorizons.com/index.php/archives/03/2011/late-pleistocene-sea-going-people-may-have-followed-a-kelp-highway

And here's an interesting 5 part documentary on the possible trans-Atlantic origins of Clovis:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1mPD3jbF5k&feature=related

[Paleolution]

I know there are some older discoveries on the East Coast, like Dr. Stanford's pre-Clovis blades that were a couple hundred feet under the ocean on the East Coast.  They are similar to the Solutrean points from Europe, but there wasn't much else found with them, so the reference is hard to place.  This new discovery is amazing in that the point types are like nothing ever found before.  They are as old as Clovis, but they were barbed.  Asia and Africa both had barbed points that go back much further than 12,000 BP, so that is what makes the Clovis people so mysterious.  Were they just a powerful band of early sea fearers that maintained their technology from Europe?  What made fluting disappear from the archaeological record?

[turkeytail]

Fluted points all but disappeared around the same time as the mega fauna. Mass extinction, climate change, asteroid? All of the above!?

[greywolf22]

June 1, 2010
Stone and bone: Archaeologist publishes first complete look at technology of Clovis culture
The San Marcos Record Tue Jun 01, 2010, 01:24 PM CDT
— A new book on the stone and bone tool technologies of Clovis culture of 13,500 years ago, published by faculty at Texas State University, is the first complete examination of the tools themselves and  how the Clovis culture used them and transmitted their production.
The book, “Clovis Technology (International Monographs in Prehistory, Archaeological Series 17),” covers the Clovis culture's making and use of stone blades, bi-faces and small tools as well as artifacts such as projectile points, rods, daggers, awls, needles, handles, hooks and ornaments made from bone, ivory, antler and teeth.   
It examines the tools used to make other tools, such as billets, wrenches, gravers and anvils, and explores how Clovis culture acquired and transmitted stone tool production. 
It is co-authored by Texas State archaeologist Michael B. Collins, who also directs the renowned Gault archaeological site in Central Texas, the world's largest Clovis excavation.
It is estimated that more than 60 percent of known Clovis artifacts have come from the Gault site near Florence.  Until recently, Clovis technology was believed to represent the Americas' earliest human inhabitants, having arrived in the hemisphere from Asia by walking across the Bering Land Bridge between 11,000 B.C. and 8,000 B.C.
However, recent discoveries at Gault and elsewhere, of stone and bone artifacts predating Clovis, have convinced most archaeologists that a culture existed in the Americas at least 500 to 1,000 years before Clovis, possibly arriving by boat and on foot.
“Our book, the first thorough examination of Clovis technology, is a step towards determining what came before Clovis,” Clark Wernecke, executive director of the Gault School of Archaeological Research, said.
“By starting with what we know, we can look for indications of what came before.”
Book co-authors include Bruce A. Bradley, director of the Experimental Archaeology Master's Programme at the University of Exeter, and C. Andrew Hemmings, Mercyhurst College.
Contributors include Jon C. Lohse, director of Texas State's Center for Archaeological Studies and Marilyn Shoberg, Texas Archeological Research Laboratory.

[greywolf22]

Writing in the October issue of Current Anthropology, archaeologists David Meltzer, Southern Methodist University, and Vance Holliday, University of Arizona, argue that there is nothing in the archaeological record to suggest an abrupt collapse of Clovis populations.
"Whether or not the proposed extraterrestrial impact occurred is a matter for empirical testing in the geological record," the researchers write.
"In so far as concerns the archaeological record, an extraterrestrial impact is an unnecessary solution for an archaeological problem that does not exist."
Comet theory devised to explain apparent disappearance
The comet theory first emerged in 2007 when a team of scientists announced evidence of a large extraterrestrial impact that occurred about 12,900 years ago.
The impact was said to have caused a sudden cooling of the North American climate, killing off mammoths and other megafauna.
It could also explain the apparent disappearance of the Clovis people, whose characteristic spear points vanish from the archaeological record shortly after the supposed impact. The findings are reported in the article "The 12.9-ka ET Impact Hypothesis and North American Paleoindians."
As evidence for the rapid Clovis depopulation, comet theorists point out that very few Clovis archaeological sites show evidence of human occupation after the Clovis.
At the few sites that do, Clovis and post-Clovis artifacts are separated by archaeologically sterile layers of sediments, indicating a time gap between the civilizations. In fact, comet theorists argue, there seems to be a dead zone in the human archaeological record in North America beginning with the comet impact and lasting about 500 years.
Evidence at Clovis sites doesn't support a disaster scenario
But Meltzer, a professor in the SMU Department of Anthropology, and Holliday dispute those claims. They argue that a lack of later human occupation at Clovis sites is no reason to assume a population collapse.
"Single-occupation Paleoindian sites — Clovis or post-Clovis — are the norm," Holliday said. That's because many Paleoindian sites are hunting kill sites, and it would be highly unlikely for kills to be made repeatedly in the exact same spot.
"Those of us who do our research in the archaeology of this time period," Meltzer says, "would actually be surprised if these sites were occupied repeatedly."
"So there is nothing surprising about a Clovis occupation with no other Paleoindian zone above it, and it is no reason to infer a disaster," Holliday said.
No evidence of post-comet gap in radiocarbon dating
In addition, Holliday and Meltzer compiled radiocarbon dates of 44 archaeological sites from across the U.S. and found no evidence of a post-comet gap. "Chronological gaps appear in the sequence only if one ignores standard deviations (a statistically inappropriate procedure), and doing so creates gaps not just around (12,900 years ago), but also at many later points in time," they write.
Sterile layers separating occupation zones at some sites are easily explained by shifting settlement patterns and local geological processes, the researchers say. The separation should not be taken as evidence of an actual time gap between Clovis and post-Clovis cultures.
Disappearance more likely a cultural choice
Holliday and Meltzer believe that the disappearance of Clovis spear points is more likely the result of a cultural choice rather than a population collapse.
"There is no compelling data to indicate that North American Paleoindians had to cope with or were affected by a catastrophe, extraterrestrial or otherwise, in the terminal Pleistocene," they conclude.
  Provided by Southern Methodist University

[turkeytail]

Their theory is clovis didnt disappear.....it evolved. Good reads Jack! Thanks!

[greywolf22]

I would go along with that. Something new and better comes along and you go with it.