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Nov 9, 2018 · 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...
- Becky Little
- 4 min
Oct 9, 2023 · The people who made them, now dubbed the Clovis people, lived in North America between 13,000 and 12,700 years ago, based on a 2020 analysis of bone, charcoal and plant remains found at Clovis...
12 hours ago · CLOVIS, Calif. (KFSN) -- A woman says her trip in an Uber on the streets of Clovis turned creepy when the driver started asking weird questions and showing her sexually explicit photos. A ...
The Clovis culture is an archaeological culture from the Paleoindian period of North America, spanning around 13,050 to 12,750 years Before Present (BP). [1] The type site is Blackwater Draw locality No. 1 near Clovis, New Mexico, where stone tools were found alongside the remains of Columbian mammoths in 1929. [2]
- Overview
- South America
- Pre-Clovis People
The Clovis people, known for their distinctive spearheads, were not the first humans to set foot in the Americas after all.
The so-called Clovis people, known for their distinctive spearheads, were not the first humans to set foot in the Americas after all, a new study says.
The find supports growing archaeological evidence found in recent years that disputes the notion that the Americas were originally populated by a single migration of people from Asia about 13,000 years ago. [See new DNA evidence linking Clovis to modern Native peoples].
New radiocarbon dating of Clovis-culture materials shows that this group inhabited the Americas a little later and for a shorter period of time than previously believed. [Learn how radiocarbon is saving elephants].
Archaeological evidence of human occupation in South America also dates to the same time as the Clovis-culture materials. This suggests that people were living in the Americas before the Clovis people arrived.
"I look at it as the final nail in the 'Clovis first' coffin," said Michael Waters, director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M University.
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.
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.
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.
Radiocarbon years and calendar years don't always match, because the atmospheric abundance of carbon 14—which is absorbed by all living things and on which radiocarbon dating is based—has varied over time.
For their study, the researchers reevaluated materials from all known Clovis sites.
But if humans lived in the Americas before the Clovis arrived, who were these other people and where did they come from?
"I think we're moving toward understanding that the peopling of the Americas was not a singular event like the Clovis-first model would have us believe," Waters said.
Instead it "was a process with people probably arriving at different times and taking different routes and potentially coming from different places."
(Related photos: the search for the first Americans.)
John Johnson is an archaeologist and ethnohistorian at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History in California.
He said the new study and other archaeological research suggest that there were people in place from coast to coast prior to what is known as the Clovis horizon.
- Stefan Lovgren
Mar 18, 2019 · What Happened to the Clovis People? The end of the Clovis age came about 12,900 years ago, but the Clovis people didn’t disappear. It appears that post-glacial climate changes, including a 1,500-year cold period, as well as the disappearance of the large animals (possibly due to an asteroid impact in Canada), forced native peoples to adapt ...
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Jun 12, 2023 · What Happened to the Clovis People? About 12,900 years ago, the Clovis culture seemingly came to a sudden end. Most likely this is because the culture split into separate groups and each adapted to its own unique environment.
