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| Figure 1: Clovis Point |
The following post is a follow up to a previous post thatdiscussed new evidence of the peopling of the New World. Until recently archaeologists believed that
the first Native Americans were the Clovis people, but more recent archaeological
evidence demonstrates that this idea was incorrect and there were actually
groups of people before the Clovis. But
who exactly where the Clovis? Today’s
post will discuss who the Clovis people were and what we know about them.
The Clovis people were originally believed to be the
founding human population of the New World.
It was originally believed that they crossed the Bering Land Bridge
between modern day Siberia/Russia and Alaska/United States of America and moved
into the modern day United States through an ice free corridor around 11,200
years ago (the earliest date associated with the Clovis culture). While this hypothesis is now largely abandoned
the existence of the Clovis people is still not in dispute.
The name Clovis comes from the site outside of Clovis, New
Mexico, where this culture was first identified in 1932. The town of Clovis inspired the name of the
stone points diagnostic of the culture.
These stone points are bifacial (meaning worked on both sides), fluted
(meaning a section removed from the middle of the tool) lanceolate projectile
points (Figure 1). These points can be
found across the modern day United States with some evidence of their presence
in Mexico and even Venezuela (in northern South America). These points would have been attached to a
long spear and used for piercing the thick hides of mammoths. There is evidence of Clovis points in the
remains of mammoths, further supporting the notion that the Clovis were big
game hunters. They would have also
foraged for their food in order to supplement their diets. In addition to their Clovis points the Clovis
people also manufactured bone tools, hammerstones, scrapers, and unfluted
projectile points. Taken together this
evidence suggests that the Clovis people were nomadic hunter-gatherers.
Because of their early existence, the preservation bias
against artifacts of this age, and the nomadic nature of these groups very
little else is known about the Clovis people.
In addition to the already identified information we do know that the
Clovis culture disappeared around 10,500 years ago. This was most likely the result of the
extinction of the mammoth, their primary source of meat, as well as changing
climatic conditions. The Clovis culture
was replaced by various other hunting and gathering groups who exploited
different resources and used new stone tool technologies. While the Clovis were not the first Native
American groups to populate the New World they most definitely were the
founding population for several later cultural groups, and therefore still hold
a significant status within Native American history.
References
Waters, M. R., & Stafford, T. W.
(2007). Redefining the age of Clovis: implications for the peopling of the
Americas. Science, 315(5815), 1122-1126.
Montenegro, A., Araujo, A., Eby, M.,
Ferreira, L., Hetherington, R., & Weaver, A. (2006). Parasites,
paleoclimate, and the peopling of the Americas: Using the hookworm to time the
Clovis migration. Current Anthropology, 47(1), 193-200.
No Author. No
Date. “Clovis People.” Crystalinks.com. Retrieved from http://www.crystalinks.com/clovis.html
7 comments:
After reading this article I learned that the Clovis people got their name from a site outside of Clovis, Mexico. I also learned that they were nomadic hunter-gatherers, whose main source of meat came from the mammoth. The Clovis people disappeared almost 10,500 years ago and their extinction was believed to be because of the mammoth.
I wonder where the name Clovis came from, is that a modern name, or was it found in records, maybe? Can someone elaborate?
The answer to your question is in the other post linked at the beginning of the post.
It would make sense that the foraging Clovis people dissipated when the mammoth did. They did not practice domestication and were hunters according to my further research.
It's cool that to this day we still practice some of the same things that people did that long ago. Hunting is still very common just not with mammoths.
This was pretty cool to me but when I first seen the word Clovis I would have never thought it would be a name of a tribe it sounded a bit more Irish to me you know like the little wooden stick thing the leprechauns walks with. I wonder why they did not practice in domestication and it totally falls right in to place now how when the mammoth disappeared the clove people did also maybe because that was their main source of food . - Mykia Chaney
The clovis tribe ironically was identified in Clovis, New Mexico. IT was informative to learn that the Clovis people also manufactured bone tools, hammerstones and scrapers.
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