prehistoric culture in the Americas c. 13,000 – 11,000 BP From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Clovis culture was one of the first well documented Nativecultures in the Americas. The Clovis people lived in the Americas about 13,000 years ago. They lived there for between 200 and 800 years. Different sources list different lengths of time in that range.
They had a special way of making tools like spear tips and knives from stones. The flint tips are called Clovis points. Artifacts that they made in this way can be found in many places in North America. The Clovis way of making tools only lasted between 500 and 1000 years. After that, other similar ways became more popular.
A decline in the availability of megafauna, together with the population becoming less and less mobile, led to local differentiation of lithic and cultural traditions across the Americas.[1][2] After this time, Clovis-style fluted points were replaced by other fluted-point traditions (such as the Folsom culture).[3]
The Clovis First theory says that the Clovis people crossed the Beringia land bridge over the Bering Strait from Siberia to Alaska during the period of lowered sea levels during the ice age, then made their way towards the south, through an ice-free corridor east of the Rocky Mountains in present-day Western Canada as the glaciersretreated.[4]
Things that point to earlier settlement of the Americas
"Clovis First" is one of the theories about the Settlement of the Americas. There are other ideas and research that go against "Clovis First".
Evidence of human habitation before Clovis
Idea about a coastal migration route: Research on the mitochondrial DNA of First Nations/Native Americans, was published in 2007. It suggests that the people of the New World may have diverged (or went away from each other and stayed away), genetically from Siberians as early as 20,000 years ago.[5] One theory says that the Pacific coast of North America may have been free of ice, and maybe the first peoples in North America came down this route before the formation of the ice-free corridor.[6]
Solutrean hypothesis
Genetic history of Indigenous peoples of the Americas: Research on mitochondrial DNA in 2014 has found that members of some native North American tribes have a maternal ancestry (called haplogroup X) that has a link to the maternalancestors of some present-day individuals in western Asia and Europe - but the link is not strong. A variant of mitochondrial DNA called X2a found in many Native Americans has been traced to (or research shows that the variant comes from) western Eurasia, while not being found in eastern Eurasia.[7]
Research that shows human habitation before the Clovis culture
Archaeological sites that have been shown to be older than the Clovis culture:
Lepper, Bradley T. (1999). "Pleistocene Peoples of Midcontinental North America". In Bonnichsen, Robson; Turnmire, Karen (eds.). Ice Age People of North America. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press. pp.362–394.
Flannery, T. (2001). The Eternal Frontier: an ecological history of North America and its peoples. New York: Grove Press. pp.173–185. ISBN978-0-8021-3888-0.
"Pedra Furada". Journey To A New Land. SFU Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. 2005. Archived from the original on 15 February 2015. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
Tanana River Valley Archaeology circa 14,000 to 9000 B.P.. Charles E. Holmes. Arctic Anthropology. Vol. 38, No. 2, Between Two Worlds: Late Pleistocene Cultural and Technological Diversity in Eastern Beringia (2001), pp. 154–170