The Clovis culture: what it was and what were its characteristics

In 1933, a team of archaeologists is digging in the western United States. The archaeological works soon bear fruit, as a series of prehistoric tools with more than 13,000 years old are found in several sites. One of the sites explored was in Clovis, New Mexico, and gave its name to an entire culture.

What exactly was the Clovis culture? What were its characteristics? Is it, as has been argued up to now, the oldest American Indian culture? Join us on this journey through this fascinating culture, which inhabited the American continent more than 13,000 years ago.

What was the Clovis culture?

The archaeological discovery of 1933 was not the only one. Year after year, Clovis-style tools were found throughout the southern United States and the northern Mexico, especially South Dakota, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Ohio, Virginia, Montana, Oklahoma, and Wyoming. Scientists presumed that all these manifestations could be linked to each other, and called this culture "Clovis culture"., in honor of one of its most important deposits. But what was this culture based on? What were its characteristics?

Mainly, the findings were based on hunting tools, made with extraordinary precision. It was about suitably sharpened flint stones, grooved in shape (the “Clovis point”) which made them a perfect weapon. The stones were very easy to insert into a spear, allowing the projectile to be thrown from a great distance. In addition, the triangular bands were very sharp, so it has been calculated that they could easily penetrate the thick skin of a mammoth, the main game.

The sophistication of the Clovis culture tools and their relatively "recent" dating have led experts to believe that the The first settlers of America, who would have arrived from Asia through the Bering Strait, already brought with them these techniques of manufacturing.

However, new theories have recently been proposed, which we will discuss below.

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The American "Eve"

Until now, the oldest evidence of human presence in America dated from about 13,500 years ago. It is the skull of a young woman (about 20-25 years old), 140 cm tall and weighing about 53 kilograms. She was found in Yucatan, in some caves that are currently completely submerged, but at the time the woman lived they were on the mainland. This primordial woman was called "Eve", although she was also she is known as Woman of Naharon.

Let us remember that, during the ice ages, the sea level was very low, so that parcels of land that are now under water were, 13,000 years ago, on the surface. Thus, the aforementioned caves, explored by archaeologists in the early 2000s, would have served as a burial place and funeral celebrations.

We have, then, that the oldest evidence of human presence in America dates from 13,500 years ago, which which coincides with the entry of the first humans to the continent and with the birth of the culture of Clovis. However, recent discoveries and studies have called into question this universally accepted theory. Among them, the discovery, in Florida, of remains dating back 14,500 years, which would precede the Clovis culture by almost 15 centuries.

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The Clovis culture, the first Americans?

Magazine Science Advances published, in 2016, a study reporting the discovery of stone tools and mastodon bones in Page-Ladson, a very deep sinkhole of the Aucilla River, Florida. Carbon-14 dating yielded astonishing information: the remains dated back about 14,550 years, that is, almost 1,500 years before the appearance of the Clovis culture.

This discovery has forced the scientific community to rethink whether Clovis was really the first American culture. Based on this, new and surprising theories have been appearing, such as the one held by Jon Erlandson, from the University of Oregon. According to this expert, the first communities entered American soil long before the migratory wave that entered on foot through the Bering Strait. But How could these first men and women access America, if before the "official" arrival the pass was covered in ice? Erlandson's theory is truly novel: the first humans arrived by boat from Asia, and from the sea, they followed the route of the great rivers: Columbia, Missouri, Mississippi and, finally, the Gulf of Mexico.

Actually, the first evidence of navigation dates back only 10,000 years, so Erlandson's theory does not hold up in principle. But according to the scientist, the remains of this supposed arrival by sea would have been eliminated by the rise in the level of the sea after the thaw (the same thaw that allowed the other wave of migrations to cross the Strait of Bering). At the moment, there are only theories.

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Responsible for the extinction of the American megafauna?

Scientific evidence attests that, at the time of the birth of the Clovis culture, an important megafauna existed in America: from giant moles to the impressive mammoths, considered the largest mammal that has ever existed. Specifically, the so-called Columbia mammoth could reach 4 meters tall and weigh about 10 tons, not to mention that its tusks were a dangerous 3-meter-long weapon.

The men and women of the Clovis culture were only able to obtain such prey through making increasingly precise tools, such as those that emerged in the different excavations. Their specialization in hunting these large mammals grew over time, to the point that they many experts point out that the extinction of this megafauna is directly related to a hunt massive.

Studies through spores (which proliferate in the fecal residues of herbivores and can be preserved for more than 10,000 years) show that, 15,000 years ago, the megafauna in America was very abundant, but that approximately 13,500 years ago it had disappeared due to complete. As we can see, the dates coincide with the Clovis culture. It's more, the disappearance of these large mammals is parallel to the disappearance of this culture.

However, Jacquelyn Gill of the University of Maine, who has extensively studied the presence of spores in soil American, ensures that these began to decrease about 14,800 years ago, that is, long before the culture appeared of Clovis. This indicates that the earlier settlers of the Americas (perhaps those who arrived by boat, according to Erlandson?) also hunted large mammals with much simpler techniques. What is clear is that the mass extinction of the megafauna already occurred at the time of the Clovis culture, as also demonstrated by the study of spores.

A mystery not yet solved

It's hard to unravel the past when it's so far away. Who, exactly, were the men and women who gave life to the so-called Clovis culture? Were they really the first Americans? Why did their culture, which produced such sophisticated tools, only last 300 years?

The answers are still not clear. Like so many other cultures of Prehistory, that of Clovis remains a mystery with many questions to be clarified.