Clovis First? Second? Third? Fourth?

Figure One - Five High Plains Clovis spear points/knife forms surface found on private land.
Note that each of these points has a flute starting at the proximal end and terminating midway
or less than midway into the body of the point. The longest point is 3.85 inches long.
John Bradford Branney Collection.  

Close your eyes and imagine the emptiness of North America thirteen thousand years ago. No cities, towns, highways, or planes. Not much of anything except a few bands of roaming Paleoindians spread across the expanse of an entire continent, living amongst countless herds of animals.

After its discovery in 1929 by Ridgely Whiteman in New Mexico, North American archaeology coronated the Clovis Paleoindian culture as royalty. Scientists proclaimed that the mammoth hunters who made the Clovis artifacts were the First Americans, i.e. the first humans to ever walk on North American soil. Since its discovery, Clovis technology has taken the breath away from artifact hunters and scientists alike. Books and magazine articles have filled our insatiable appetites for everything Clovis, including speculating about the lifestyles of those Paleoindians. No other prehistoric culture in North America has captured more attention than Clovis.

Figure Two - Edward Howard in 1933 at the
Clovis-type site in New Mexico.

We know from current archaeological evidence that Clovis flintknapping technology started showing up in North American sites around 13,500 years ago. But where did the Paleoindians who made that technology come from? That's the million-dollar question. The first and longest-held belief was the Clovis First Theory which in broad strokes stated that ancestral Clovis people originating in Siberia, crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia into Alaska during the last ice age when ocean levels were low. The theory proposed that the ancestral Clovis people holed up in Beringia until the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets began melting and growing apart. The melting allowed the Clovis people access between the ice sheets to migrate south across Canada into the United States and Mexico. Since archaeologists contended that the Clovis people were the First Americans, they proposed that those people brought their flintknapping technology with them from Beringia, or they invented it once they arrived in the interior of  North America.  

The Clovis First Theory held water for decades and there are still a few scientists who hold onto that premise even though we have not seen any evidence, or smoking gun, proving that Clovis Paleoindians crossed the Bering Strait and brought their technology with them. In other words, if Clovis people and their technology came to North America through Siberia, why can't we trace Clovis technology back to Beringia or Siberia?

Figure Three - A painting called Cautious Killers depicting Clovis hunters trapping a
mammoth at what would one day be called the Colby Mammoth Site in northern
Wyoming. Courtesy National Geographic. Artist Roy Anderson.   

When I reference a smoking gun with Clovis technology, what exactly am I writing about? Clovis technology is represented in the archaeological record by stone projectile points, prismatic blades, blade cores, and unifacial tools made from blades. Clovis technology was heavy into blade technology. Clovis technology also included projectile points and foreshafts made from bone and ivory. Red ocher was also tied to the Clovis people. They covered the hematite-rich powder indiscriminately over artifacts and their burials. Unfortunately, other Paleoindian cultures besides Clovis dabbled in some of the above technologies and practices so we cannot attribute the technologies and practices exclusively to Clovis. The one technological innovation or smoking gun that distinguished Clovis from other Paleoindian cultures was a fluted projectile point! Clovis or Clovis-like projectile points are one of the most recognizable projectile point types in North America.  

Clovis projectile points are quite distinctive. They are one of a kind. Beyond their general outline and preferred biface reduction method, Clovis projectile points possessed a recognizable feature; Clovis flintknappers fluted most of their projectile points. The flutes or grooves started at the middle of the proximal end or base of the projectile point and terminated midway or less from the tip (see examples in figures one and four). Artifact hunters and scientists have discovered fluted Clovis or Clovis-like projectile points across the lower 48 states from coast to coast and from Canada to northern Mexico. That was an amazing dispersion of technology over a relatively short period of time. Some scientists estimate that the Clovis culture was only around for approximately three hundred years. Adaptation of Clovis technology by the populace must have been quick and decisive. But, where did the process for fluting originate, and by whom?

Figure Four - 3.85 inch long Clovis spear/knife form surface
found on private land in Colfax County, New Mexico. Note the
extraordinary flute. John Bradford Branney Collection. 

A master flintknapper named Bob Patten once wrote in his book Peoples of the Flute, "If, as it appears, the Clovis tradition [fluting] was invented here [North America], someone must have already been here to invent it."

An old saying stated that hindsight is 20-20, meaning that it is always easier to second guess the past than to forecast the future. To believe that there were no humans in North America prior to Clovis has always seemed naïve and unrealistic to me. Most other continents on the planets have evidence of humans dating back thousands and thousands of years before Clovis, even going back millions of years in Africa. Why would North America be the exception and remain human free right up until 13,500 years ago? What prevented humans from finding North America prior to Clovis? How did North America remain isolated while the cradle of humanity was happening all over the world? That makes no sense to me. 

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Ninety years after scientists first documented Clovis in New Mexico, there is now undeniable archaeological evidence that the Clovis people were not the First Americans. Sites with names such as Cooper's Ferry, Cactus Hill, Friedkin, Gault, Meadowcroft, and Topper have exposed the weakness in the Clovis First Theory. But why did it take so long? Perhaps, scientists were initially so locked onto the Clovis First Theory that egos got in the way and they poo-pooed anyone who disputed Clovis First. I have read that on some earlier archaeological sites digging stopped once Clovis was discovered because the investigators assumed there was nothing older than Clovis. 

In the past two decades, the Clovis First Theory has taken some hefty body shots and as far as I am concerned it is down for the eight count. The Clovis First Theory has been dead in my mind for some time. Archaeological discoveries older than Clovis are now aplenty, pushing human entrance into North America to 14,500, 15,000, 16,000 years ago, and beyond. It would not surprise me one bit if someday archaeological evidence discovers humans in North America as early as 25,000 years ago or maybe earlier. That just makes sense!

As far as the origin of Clovis technology, the mystery remains unsolved. In 2011, scientists excavated Clovis-like fluted projectile points at a site called Serpentine Hot Springs in northwestern Alaska (figure five). Could that be the smoking gun everyone was looking for?  Unfortunately, charcoal from that site dated to around 12,000 years, a thousand years younger than Clovis technology in the lower 48 states. If the people who made and used Clovis technology originated in Siberia and Beringia as the Clovis First Theory contended, and Serpentine Hot Springs was the smoking gun, wouldn't Serpentine Hot Springs fluted projectile points be older than Clovis fluted projectile points in the lower 48 states?  Serpentine Hot Springs indicates that perhaps Clovis technology migrated northward from the lower 48 states to Alaska, and not vice versa. 

The mystery remains as to the origins of Clovis technology.    

 

Figure Five -  Fluted points found buried in 
northwest Alaska. Charcoal dated the site
younger than Clovis in the lower 48 states. 

The historical fiction novels written by John Bradford Branney are known for their impeccable research and biting realism. In his latest blockbuster novel Beyond the Campfire, Branney catapults his readers back into Prehistoric America where they reunite with some familiar faces from Branney’s best-selling prehistoric adventure series the Shadows on the Trail Pentalogy.

John Bradford Branney holds a geology degree from the University of Wyoming and an MBA from the University of Colorado. John lives in the Colorado mountains with his wife, Theresa. Beyond the Campfire is the eleventh published book by Branney.