The "Clovis Fist" theory has recently received some media attention due to the publication by one of its staunch defenders that suggests a post-Clovis date for one of the oldest pre-Clovis sites in the Americas, suggesting that it is far more recent than previously believed. (see my post on the new date for ancient Monte Verde site in Chile).
But, what exactly do we mean by Clovis or pre- and post-Clovis? Today I will summarize the Clovis First theory.
It al began in Clovis, New Mexico, USA
A young man named Ridgely Whiteman found some stone points and mammoth bones in 1929 in a spot known as Blackwater Draw, a temporary stream that, ~10 miles SW of Clovis, New Mexico (see Google Map). Whiteman had been following the discovery of the Folsom stone points in Folsom, in northwestern New Mexico (see map) when he made his discovery.
A few years later, in 1932 archaeologist Edgar B. Howard and his student John L. Cotter had been digging in Buttler cave close to Carlsbad, New Mexico, 150 mi. (250 km) southeast of Clovis. While stopping in Carlsbad, the scientists learned from an amateur archaeologist, A.W. "Pete" Anderson, who had founded an archaeologist society in Clovis, about the Clovis finds. Anderson led them to the site. Howard and Cotter excavated the area and discovered some distinctivly shaped stone tools with fluted points. They were deemed to be old, as they lay beneath a layer of sediment that contained buffalo bones and another type of stone tools, the ones that had been discovered in Folsom (Folsom points), and which were considered to be Pleistocene artifacts.
Over the next five years Howard dug at the site, and in 1935 he published Clovis Evidence of Early Man in North America
This discovery was important because it followed the discovery of a pointed stone tool discovered by Jesse Higgins in 1926, near Folsom, also in New Mexico. The digging also produced bones from an extinct species of bison, suggesting a Pleistocene age for human beings in America.
At that time, the official doctrine that had been imposed 30 years earlier by Ales Hrldicka and William Henry Holmes of the Smitshonian Institution, and Thomas Chamberlin of the United States Geological Survey, refused to accept that humans had reached America before the end of the last Ice Age, and placed their arrival around 3,000 to 10,000 years ago. The discovery of the Folsom points, and the Clovis stone tools confirmed that the 10,000 year-old ceiling could be ignored. These tools suggested that there had been people in North America around 13,000 years ago.
The prevailing orthodox dogma was replaced by a new theory, the "Clovis First" one. Which proposed that the people that had designed and used these fluted stone points, were the first to reach America from Asia, through Beringia. They spread across the empty North America with their stone points and used them to hunt "big game", the megafauna. They were mammoth hunters, and had reached America following the mammoths across Beringia during the period of the great ice-melt at the end of the last Ice Age some 13,000 years ago.
Clovis and the Ice-Free Corridor
C. Vance Haynes, 1964 analyzed the dates of the Clovis sites and found that they spanned a period of around 500 to 1,000 years, between ~11 or 11.5 ky to 12 ky, none were older than that date, which confirmed that they were the "first" to reach America because "The glacial history of Alaska, Canada, and the Great Lakes region indicates that, for the first time in at least 15,000 years, an ice-free, trans-Canadian corridor opened up approximately 12,000 years ago. Since Clovis points are distributed from coast to coast south of the Valders ice border, the abrupt appearance of Clovis artifacts in the stratigraphic record of the High Plains some 700 years later suggests that Clovis progenitors passed through Canada during [this] time."
Now, Clovis and the "Ice Free Corridor" dogma became linked. The geologists of that time believed that the whole of the northern part of North America had been covered by a seamless sheet of ice, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, so it was only natural that when the ice melted, and a clear corridor appeared, mammoths, and the humans that hunted them, poured into the southern reaches of North America. Before that time, the access into the New World was blocked by the ice sheet.
The Clovis-First theory had been taught to hundreds of archaeologists since the late 1930s, and became part of their mindset, the new orthodoxy that replaced the previous one (Hrldicka's late Beringian entry).
Due to the glacial ice blocking the way, nobody could have entered America earlier than 12,000 years ago (unless you believe that humans were around before the Last Glacial Maximum some 25 kya, but such old dates are still looked upon with disgust). Neat, tidy, dogmatic, and... wrong,
Cracks in the structure
But, during the 1970s, some new sites were discovered, and their dates seemed to be older than the 13ky limit supported by the Clovis First theory, Meadowcroft Rockshelter in the US ( Adovasio, Gunn, Donahue, and Stuckenrath, 1978) dated at 16 to 19 ky, and Monte Verde in Chile are two examples. They were relentlessly attacked by the orthodoxy, but somehow have managed to survive the onslaught.
Why would modern human beings well adapted to dealing with cold glacial climates (they lived in Siberia, northern Eurasia during the last 50 ky) take so long to reach the New World? They sailed across the Wallace Line into Australia 50 kya ago, why would they camp in Beringia for 15-20 ky? Were they waiting for an ice-free corridor to open, or is the theory flawed?
This is not a scientific discussion, the dogma and prejudice, the personal interests in academia and petty enmity have led to the confrontation between clovis-firsters and those proposing an early peopling of America.
Archaeologists dig, identify, select, sort, analyze and interpret data. Conclusions in academic publishing are analog to a building that is built, brick by brick, on the foundation of previous findings. So if scholar after scholar find that 13,000 years is the oldest date unearthed in America, it becomes accepted as a fact. But, if nobody digs deeper to see what the sediments aged 15, 20, or 25 ky old contain, how can we be sure that 13 ky is the oldest age? It requires new, unexpected discoveries to shake the structure, and move forward in our understanding of how the Universe, and learn more about us, as humans.
Orthodoxy builds complacency. Disputing established beliefs is not good for someone wanting to forge an academic career.
So, older sites are not on the agenda. Nobody looks for them, and if found, they are dismissed, discarded, and demolished. To make matters worse, potential coastal routes into America, that skirted the glacial ice fields, lie along the now submerged continental shelf, beyond the reach of archaologists.
Dating is also an issue, stone tools are not easy to date, radiocarbon methods require organic matter, not always present, and luminescence dating also has limitations. Then, there is the issue of interpreting the data. Did the Clovis tools originate in America, were they brought there by a group of people from Asia? Did the toolage spread with the people as they moved across the continent, or was the know-how culturally transmitted to other groups of different populations?
Why are there no Clovis points beyond North America (or Venezuela, where Clovis-like tools have been found)? All the older sites that have been discovered in North America (earlier than the Clovis ones) have a stem-shaped stone tip, this helps fixing the spearhead to a shaft. One tip is sharp, the other stemmed. The Clovis and Folsom tools, on the other hand, are lanceolate, or leaf-shaped meaning that they are long ovals with sharp edges, with a tip at one end, and concave base on the other. They are very different from the stemmed points that preceeded them.
Stemmed points, not lanceolate ones are the oldest and most common ones found in South America. Here, the main stone tool technology is the distinctive "Fishtail" or "Fell's Cave" points, dated to 10-11 kya, also found in Central America, contemporary with the Clovis points. Both are shown below:
Now we know that the ice free corridor opened up earlier (Meltzer et al., 2022), 15.5-16 kya. Where were the Clovis people between 16 and 13 kya? Surely someone entered America at that time, before the oldest Clovis points.
Another theory proposes a coastal route where people used boats and bypassed the ice blockage (Davis and Madsen, 2020). This pushes the arrival date to even earlier periods.
And finally, there are may pre-Clovis sites, older than 13,000 years, that were reported across the continent, I will only mention some of them: Pendejo Cave USA (55,000 years), Cacao shelter, Argentina (40,000 years), Hartley, USA (37,000 years), Chiquihuite Cave in Mexico (33,000 years), Claromecó, Argentina (30,000 years), Gault (26,000 years), Meadowcroft Rock shelter, White Sands USA, and Pedra Furada, Brazil (24,000 years).
Now, nearly one century later you would expect the Clovis to be considered early arrivals, but, not the first to reach the Americas, But, a bad penny always turns up again, so the Clovis-first theory refuses to die, as shown by the recent paper attacking the early age of Monte Verde.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall ©
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