The Clovis culture were Paleo-Indian people who inhabited North (and South) America from 13,500 years ago at the end of the last glacial age. The Clovis culture is also referred to as the Llano culture. The culture was named after Clovis, New Mexico where early evidence from a people living in the Pleistocene was gathered in the late 1930s.
Most evidence gathered is of tools made from stone, bone and mammoth tusk, which carry similar characteristics and date to Pleistocene and post-Pleistocene times. These have been found across North America. A distinctively-shaped, thin, fluted stone spear point is known as the Clovis point.
Further evidence found includes mammoths with Clovis points in situ, mammoth bones and tusks that have knife marks or have butcher marks. Human coprolites (fossil feces) have been found in a caves in south-central Oregon, dating to 14,000 years ago, and containing mtDNA haplogroups A2 and B2, two of the five major Native American mtDNA haplogroups. These finds in Oregon may represent a pre-Clovis people.
Possible Origins of the Clovis People
The prevailing theory of the origin of the ancient Paleo-Indians such as the Clovis people is that they are thought to have migrated from Siberia approximately 20,000 years ago, when they crossed a bridge from Siberia to Alaska at a time when the sea was low and land was exposed. This early migration may have been followed by later migrations.
These early immigrants are thought to have then migrated down the Pacific coastline where land and vegetation may have been available early on. Evidence of the Clovis culture from ca. 13,000 years ago has been found in Chile. From the Pacific Coast the Clovis people may have then migrated eastward as the ice melted. Beyond the ice, herds of bison and mammoths awaited them. Pre-Clovis people were basically hunter-gatherers, whereas the Clovis culture hunted big game, using their tool technology.
Some scientists believe through mitochondrial DNA studies that all of the Native American MtDNA, even haplogroup X (which links to some peoples in West Asia and Europe), came from the same source, a part of the same founding population which entered North America from Siberia.
Another theory is based on the earlier findings in America of a pre-Clovis people that came to the Americas 5000 years earlier. The Solutrean theory recognizes the similarity in production method between the Clovis point and tools made by the Solutrean neolithic (Stone Age) culture in southwest France, making a point that the first Americans may have been European.
Researchers found in Barrow, Alaska that modern clothing makers recognized some Solutrean bone needles. The caribou skin clothing the Inuit still continue to wear coul have easily been made by people in 16,000 B.C.E. It is also possible that voyages from Europe, like those 700 years ago could have been made anciently. And of course, another theory states that there may have been ancient mariners crossing the Pacific in various wavesof migration as well.
What Happened to the Clovis People?
The innovative Clovis spearpoint seemed to coincide with a mass extinction of the continent's megafauna. The mammoth, the giant armadillo, the giant sloth and the great black bear all disappeared soon after the Clovis point was utilized in America. It is possible that these animals may have been overhunted by the increasing population of Clovis people along with climate changes and/or disease. For whatever reason, at this point it is still unclear, but the Clovis people also seemed to die away.
For one group of Clovis descendants there is some evidence of their fate. Archaeologists believe that the first people in the broader San Juan Basin were hunter-gatherers who were distantly descended from the nomadic Clovis hunters who are thought to have arrived in the Southwest around 11,000 B.C.E. From 6000 to 800 B.C.E. these post-Clovis people belonged to the Archaic period. These hunter-gatherer people were found to have lived at sites such as Atlatl Cave in about 900 B.C.E.
By approximately 490 C.E., their descendants, designated as Basketmakers, were farming within Chaco Canyon and living in pithouse settlements. By 850 C.E., the Basketmaker descendants or Pueblo people, known as the Anasazi had expanded and began to become more complex. At the beginning of the 12th century C.E. the Pueblo people had reached their peak, coinciding with the building of the Aztec cities, who may have been the same as the Pueblo people.
By the mid-12th century, the Pueblo civilization in Chaco Canyon collapsed as they experienced a 50-year drought and and intense environmental challenges. Both the modern Puebloan Peoples, such as the Hopi (from 1150 C.E.), and the Aztecs are thought to be descended from the Pueblo Anasazi people, who anciently came from Clovis origins.
Resources:
Handwerk, Brian. “Americas Settled by Two Groups of Early Humans-Study Says“ National Geographic News (12 December 2005)
Shreeve, James. "The Greatest Journey," National Geographic, March 2006
Stone Age Columbus BBC TV programme summary
Paula I. Nielson - Paula I. Nielson, Ph.D., holds credentials and interests in anthropology, archaeology, religion, the Middle East and Asia.
