Abstract

The timing of human entrance into North America has been a topic of debate that dates back to the late 19th century. Central to the modern discussion is not whether late Pleistocene-age populations were present on the continent, but the timing of their arrival. Key to the debate is the age of tools—bone rods, large prismatic stone blades, and bifacially chipped and fluted stone weapon tips—often found associated with the remains of late Pleistocene fauna. For decades, it was assumed that this techno-complex—termed “Clovis”—was left by the first humans in North America, who, by 11,000–12,000 years ago, made their way eastward across the Bering Land Bridge, or Beringia, and then turned south through a corridor that ran between the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets, which blanketed the northern half of the continent. That scenario has been challenged by more-recent archaeological and archaeogenetic data that suggest populations entered North America as much as 15,300–14,300 years ago and moved south along the Pacific Coast and/or through the ice-free corridor, which apparently was open several thousand years earlier than initially thought. Evidence indicates that Clovis might date as early as 13,400 years ago, which means that it was not the first technology in North America. Given the lack of fluted projectile points in the Old World, it appears certain that the Clovis techno-complex, or at least major components of it, emerged in the New World.

Highlights

  • The exact timing of the colonization of North America is open to question, but what is not in question is the point of origin of the early colonists

  • Despite a few claims to the contrary, including one that envisions the colonization of North America by Upper Paleolithic people from western Europe some 20,000–24,000 years ago [1], overwhelming archaeological and archaeogenetic evidence [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16] indicates that humans moved eastward across the Bering Land Bridge, or Beringia, during the Late Glacial Maximum and made their way either south along or near the coast [17,18,19,20]

  • /or through a corridor that ran between the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets that covered the northern half of the continent [21,22,23,24,25]

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Summary

Introduction

The exact timing of the colonization of North America is open to question (see below), but what is not in question is the point of origin of the early colonists. The dispersal of Clovis allows us to examine at a fine scale how colonization processes can play out across a vast extent of space that at the time had at best a very small resident population. To set the stage for the other papers in this special issue of Quaternary, I focus on the origin and spread of that complex, together involved in in its its transmission. Clovis points points were were made from several cryptocrystalline stone types, such as chert, quartzite, and obsidian. After fluted points were faces that extend from the base to about a third of the way to the tip (Figure 1).

Clovis
Earlier Techno-Complexes
Location of the
The Elusive Origins of Fluting
The Spread of Clovis
Conclusions
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