Archaeology: Pre-Clovis Megafaunal Hunters

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Pre-Clovis Megafaunal Hunters Oct 21st 2011, 08:07 The Manis Mastodon site, reported in Science today, is throwing (yet another) curve ball into what scholars understand about the founding populations of North America. 3-D Reconstruction of the Bone Point in Manis Mastodon Rib. The flat layer going across the picture is the edge of the bone. The exterior is above this line and the interior is below the line. You can clearly see the bone point that penetrates into the rib. It has been sharpened to a point. The tip of the point broke off after impact and rotated a bit. You can also see how some of the bone point failed and scissored. Image courtesy of Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A&M University Until about 15 years ago, the mainstream archaeological community largely agreed that the first people who occupied North America were big-game hunters called Clovis people, who crossed the Bering Strait from northeastern Asia no earlier than 11,200 years ago. In 1977, the Monte Verde site at the tip of the South American continent was discovered: a site predating all Clovis sites by some two thousand years, and some 15,000 kilometers south of Bering Strait. Since that time, many other sites older than Clovis (now called "pre-Clovis", for want of a better term) have been identified in both North and South America. We still believe, more or less, that the entry way was across the Bering Strait, but the living strategies of pre-Clovis have turned out to be far more diverse than simply big game hunters. Pre-Clovis people were hunter-gatherer-fishers, meaning that they ate game, fish and plants, as the occasion warranted. Manis Mastodon is a site on the Pacific Coastline of Washington State, and it is one of a handful of sites that suggest that the omniverous pre-Clovis also dabbled in megafaunal hunting strategies. Ayer Pond, in Washington State very near Manis, is a pre-clovis site where workmen discovered a butchered bison. Fenske, Mud Lake, Schaefer and Hebior are four sites in Wisconsin that represent woolly mammoth hunting/butchering at pre-clovis dates. Manis Mastodon, a description of the site itself Guide to Pre-Clovis, summary of current information Pre-Clovis Sites Populating America, four theories on how people got there Waters MR, Stafford Jr. TW, McDonald HG, Gustafson C, Rasmussen M, Cappellini E, Olsen JV, Szklarczyk D, Jensen LJ, Gilbert MTP et al. 2011. Pre-Clovis mastodon nunting 13,800 years ago at the Manis site, Washington. Science 334:351-352. Elsewhere Old American theory is 'speared', Jonathan Amos, BBC Early hunters killed mastodons with mastodons (Also, you can chuck a bone spear through a car. Who knew?), Ed Young at Discover What Slew An Ancient Mastodon? DNA Tells Tale, Nell GreenfieldBoyce, NPR Big-Game Hunt Adds to Evidence of Early North American Settlemen, Sindya N. Bhanoo, NYT

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