Continuing with the Clovis people, and their lanceolate stone points (leaf shaped, without a stem, with a flatter, concave tip opposite its point), a paper published in Science by Madsen et al., 2025 reported that similar stone-knapping technologies were used in Japan around 20,000 years ago and in North America 15,000 to 16,000 years ago, producing stemmed stone points. This occurred before the Clovis-style lanceolate points appeared.
This is the paper: David B. Madsen et al., Characterizing the American Upper Paleolithic. Sci. Adv. 11, eady9545(2025). DOI :10.1126/sciadv.ady9545. I had already posted about it in the context of an early peopling of America, today I will refer to it in the context of Clovis "late" and also an even earlier arrival date into America before 27 kya.
The paper studied tools found in ten different ancient pre-Clovis sites (including Friedkin and Page-Ladson mentioned in my previous post) dating back to the North American Upper Paleolitic (AUP) and compared them with tools unearthed in Japan.
With some the exception of the Schaefer, Hebior, and White Sands sites, all the others share similar stone working technologies and are ancient: "Age estimates associated with the basal AUP components at these sites range between ~20,000 and ~13,500 cal yr B.P. Because the 10 sites are widely distributed across North America south of the ice sheet, the AUP populations associated with their occupations were also apparently widespread, albeit perhaps thinly. Given this wide distribution and the associated age range, we speculate that the initial occupation of lower-latitude North America likely occurred around 20,000 cal yr B.P."
This is interesting, widespread across the subcontinent 20 ky ago! The paper also questions the Beringian origin and the "standstill" hypothesis.
"... there are no known stone tool complexes in Beringia that are old enough and/or similar enough to be possible progenitors of AUP technology. All lithic tool assemblages in eastern Beringia postdate ~14,500 cal yr B.P., lack large core-and-blade production, and are characterized by a microblade technology and a small “teardrop-shaped” projectile point pattern that is not found in the AUP.
...
In other words, present speculation that ANA [Ancient Native American] populations and AUP technology originated in Beringia, e.g., (7, 8), is just that—speculation—and so we need to look elsewhere for a likely cultural progenitor of the AUP. The archeological record of the northwestern Pacific Rim’s Paleo-Sakhalin-Hokkaido-Kuril (PSHK) peninsula and its vicinities in continental East Asia is older than the AUP, is geographically most proximal to North America, and is therefore the more likely region where an AUP cultural progenitor may be found.
...
The distinctive technological features seen in Hokkaido LUP [Late Upper Paleolithic] lithic assemblages dating to between ~20,000 and ~16,000 cal yr B.P. provide some of the strongest clues potentially linking the cultural patterns of the LUP in the PSHK to the AUP. While we cannot yet determine whether the LUP populations on Hokkaido or elsewhere in the PSHK [Paleo-Sakhalin-Hokkaido-Kuril region] (or Beringia, for that matter) were directly genetically related to the First Americans, their technological lithic traditions do suggest potential cultural connections. "
Clovis period was short lived
Clovis points appeared ~13,275 to ~12,980 cal yr B.P. but "were largely abandoned by the end of the very short ~600 to ~250-year Clovis period" they were replaced by the Folsom style points.
Lack of Microblades hint at a very early date for the peopling of America: older than 27 kya
The theory sounds interesting, but there are some things that it does not explain. For instance, there are no microblades in among the AUP stone tools. Yet these are found in Northeastern Asia and Hokkaido in Japan in sites that are older than 20,000 years (Figure 9 in the paper shows that microblades first appeared 27 kya). The authors find this "intriguing" (because they are constrained by orthodox pre-Clovis dates for the peopling of America which do not contemplate very early dates). They suggest that microblades are an adaptation to the colder environment of Northern Asia (?). A simple explanation is that the first people to reach America did so before microblades were developed, in other words they did so over 27 ky ago.
And, unsurprisingly, the paper states that "Although the exact timing is uncertain, the ice-free corridor between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets appears to have closed by around 26,000 cal yr B.P. and remained impassable until after the appearance of AUP sites south of the continental ice sheets." This, in my opinion suggests that these people entered America before 26,000 years ago while the corridor was open (which coincides, more or less, with the 27 ky limit mentioned above). What other proof do you need?
But the paper, constrained by current orthodox timelines proposes a later migration along a coastal route 20,000 years ago and proposes the following dates and supporting literature:
"Praetorius et al., in a review of environmental conditions along the Pacific coast of North America, particularly variations in the strength of counterclockwise coastal currents, suggest that the most optimal times for a coastal migration during this period were between ~24,500 and ~22,000 cal yr B.P. and again between ~20,000 and ~19,000 cal yr B.P. Similarly, on the basis of an examination of faunal records from the same southern Alaska and Canadian coastal zone, Steffen concludes that glacial ice cover “probably hindered” migration starting between ~23,300 and ~20,000 cal yr B.P. and lasted until ~18,900 to ~17,700 cal yr B.P. Together, these studies conclude that conditions were optimal for a coastal migration into the Americas sometime about 22,000 years ago, a time estimate compatible with our archeologically based estimate of sometime shortly before ~20,000 cal yr B.P."
The authors also open the window for an earlier migration, by sea (as mentioned in my previous post on this paper) "Alternatively, the migration may have been rapid but also have occurred any time. By ~30,000 cal yr B.P., Upper Paleolithic seafarers were using sea-going vessels to access some of the outer islands in the Japanese archipelago, and were capable of negotiating the Kuroshio Current, one of the fastest in the world. This suggests that such experienced seafarers may also have been capable of handling adverse Pacific coastal currents. Either way, environmental constraints on the timing of the initial occupation of the Americas may not have been much of a factor."
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