Black's Fork River Wyoming Site

Continuing with this series on ancient pre Clovis sites in America, this post will cover the Black's Fork River site, located in Wyoming, USA, which I didn't know existed until I read about it in Hidden History of the Human Race by Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson, 1993.

Discovered in the 1930s

The site was discovered by Harold Marion Dunning (1891-1973) a local historian, businessman, and amateur archaeologist. He founded the Loveland Museum in Loveland Colorado and established the local Stone Age Fair.

Dunning, accompanied by his friend and former student, Edison P. Lohr, who also lived in Loveland, found some unusual stone tools, artifacts that were different from the usual Indian arrow points. They came from the terraces along the Black's Fork River.

The river has its sources in the Uinta mountain range in Utah, and is an affluent of the Green River. It heads east across Utah, into Wyoming and then curves south into Colorado, to join the Green River and eventually flow into the Colorado River.

The Black's Fork River has eroded a plateau that has slowly been rising over millennia, and formed terraces. The region was not glaciated, and although it is arid nowadays, in the past it harbored grasslands and open forests.

The two men showed these stone implements to Etienne Bernardeu Renaud (1880-1973), a Frenchman, who was a professor of anthropology at the University of Denver. Renaud was immediately interested, as he had been trained in France, and recognized them as Early Paleolithic tools. Renaud set up an excavation in 1933, finding and collecting more tools along the Black's Fork River between Lyman and Granger, Wyoming (see approx. location in Google Maps).

Ruth Simpson, 1961, see p.32 describes the sites along the river citing three publications by Renaud (the 1936, 1938, and 1940 articles titled "The Archaeological Survey of the High Western Plains", seventh, tenth, and twelfth reports, respectively, University of Denver, Department of Anthropology).

The tools have a definite Lower-Paleolithic appearance, and were foiund in over forty surface sites. There were different types of artifacts grouped into three categories. The "Peripheral" kind, which were small tools, the "Sand Dune" material, which are more recent, and then came the "Typical" artifacts, the hallmarks of "Black's Fork Culture" or "Black's Fork Industry", the Lower-Paleoloithic tools.

These are made of chert and are the oldest of the three. They are mostly large-sized, heavy choppers accompanied by "large scrapers and many coup de poing-like implements", shown in the image below. The assemblies also include crude quartzite pebbles that have been shaped into flaked stone implements, with a dark patina covering their sufaces, which are "strikingly similar to the Pebble Industry placed at the base of the Lower Paleolithic culture sequence on other continents".

Black's Fork River, stone tools. Source, p. 33

Rejected by the Establishment

Renaud described them as "early and late Chellean, and early Acheulian coups-de-poing together with early Clactonian flakes is perfectly consistent and would suggest a cultural complex in America similar to that in Europe" (Source, p.86). These tools, in Europe are the mark of H. erectus.

As expected, the mainstream archaeologists, who had for decades stood beside the theory of a late peopling of America (championed by Ales Hrdlicka), and were now slowly embracing the Clovis First theory which was characterized by Neolithic tools, modern, delicate, and crafted by modern men, with an older arrival date in the Americas (~10 to 13 kya), but definitely not Paleolithic.

During the 1930s, E.B. Renaud explored and excavated the area finding more of these crude stone tools.

Despite Simpson's 1961 commentary quoted further up, the orthodox archaeologists refused to acknowledge these implements as real man-made tools. Renaud was surprised by these rebuttals and wrote in 1938 that his findings were "...harshly criticized by one of the irreconcilable opponents of the antiquity of man in America, who had seen neither the sites nor the specimens. After such subjective and unfair criticism, the best course to pursue was to do more extensive exploration, to collect more numerous specimens, to study them more closely, and to compare them directly with Old World artifacts of well-authenticated origin and established age and culture, and to obtain the expert opinions of qualified scientists not prejudiced on the subject of the antiquity of man in the New World." Source, p.87)

An amateur archaeologist, and art professor, Herbert L. Minshall (1912-1991), supported an early peopling of America, and in his book Buchanan Canyon: Ancient Human Presence in the Americas (1989) mentions the Black's Fork site. Below is an image showing one of the Black's Fork River tools, from his book.

Minshall says that a professor at the Colorado School of Mines, Dr. E. H. Stephens, in 1938, assigned an age of 125,000 to 190,000 years BP, or even earlier. However, by 1940 he had recanted.

The critics gave all tools found along the river a rectn age even though the tools from the older upper terraces are covered with desert varnish (an indication of great age) are have shapes similar to H. erectus crafted tools from the Old World and those from the recent lower terraces resemble Paleoindian tools or Upper Paleolithic, with no desert patina.

Renaud retired in 1948. The matter was ignored, Clovis First had prevailed.

Renaud had visite sites in France during his trips to Europe, including the key sites that gave their name to stone industries: Solutrewan, from Le Solutré, and Mousterian from Le Mostier, just to name two of them. He had seen Neanderthal and early Modern Human tools spanning over 250,000 years.

Yet, even in 1968, an article by Whitthoft and Eyman entioned Renaud's Black's Fork Culture, as "a controversial complex. Great antiquity has been claimed for it. It consists of crude massive tools of quartzite and flint, notable for their primitive character and large size. They have been compared with the most ancient stone tools from Eurasia and Africa" but, added that their survey considered the most recent artifacts that had a crude Clactonian appearance as the work of Shoshone natives while the oldest tools they found "are less than eight thousand years old on geological evidence."

Yet the geological evidence is incomplete because the tools are not embedded in deep stratigraphic layers that could be dated, they are superficial, and, as Minshall affirms "... weathering over long periods in a variety of environments can remove original surfaces by undeterminable amounts, particularly by blowing sand or dust, so that surface finds are usually subject only to personal interpretations based on geological provenience, typology, technological aspects, individual familiarity with similar industries elsewhere, and what might be called a "consensus" or current doctrine, whatever that might be... With the soils reduced by the actions of wind and rain and melting snow, the stone materials had been slowly concentrated into a desert pavement, a mosaic-like surface into which the artifacts had been incorporated as solidly as paveing stones." Minshall, 1989, p.88 & 90.

Schroedl, 1985 (see p. 16) states that "Even Renaud (1940:91) recognized some serious flaws with his chronology of the region. All of the artifacts of the Typical and Peripheral cultures were surface finds; Renaud was unable to locate any buried components from these occupations, components which he expected to produce Pleistocene fauna" (Typical and Peripheral were the oldest elements) and argue that they are in fact recen tools "(Sharrock 1966) has demonstrated that the bulk of the flaked artifacts from these reputed early cultures do not represent crude hand axes and flake implements, but are more parsimoniously interpreted as remnants of lithic reduction stages, e.g., cores, blanks and preforms, instead of paleolithic tools."

Closing Comments

This site is indeed controversial. Assigning an age is complicated, and the orthodox viewpoint has prevailed, assigning a recent, paleoindian origin to these crude Early Paleolithic-like tools. I am open to a Paleolithic peopling of America, but it can only be proven irrefutably with stratigraphic evidence, datable bones of animals and humans. Until then, the question remains open.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Denisovans in America... I found an article about this possibility

My search for scholarly articles about an early peopling of America struck gold today. I came across a post on a blog that was structured like a research paper, which is a nice detail. It was written by Riley Rogerson, and its title is Multi-Level Hominin Migration and Denisovan Presence in the Americas posted on 2025/07/09. It even includes bibliographic references. Well done!

You can read the post at Rogerson's blog, the white letters against a black background make it hard on the eyes (by the way, I also dislike the beige background I chose for my blog, but now it is too late to change it!). Below I summarize the main points and include links to any post I may have written about a specific item.

Abstract: "This theory proposes that Denisovans, an archaic hominin group closely related to Neanderthals, may have been the earliest hominin migrants to the Americas. A 130,000-year-old archaeological site in California suggests hominin activity long before anatomically modern humans are known to have left Africa. During this period, Denisovans inhabited Siberia and may have crossed the Beringia land bridge, establishing ephemeral populations in North America. These groups likely died out without descendants but left behind physical traces. Later, modern humans who interbred with Denisovans in Eurasia crossed into the Americas in intermittent migration waves taking place possibly as early as 37,000 years ago. Genetic findings in a 1,500-year-old skeleton from Uruguay confirm persistent Denisovan ancestry in Indigenous populations, supporting the idea of earlier, layered migrations. This model complicates the standard peopling narrative and opens new avenues for understanding pre-Clovis human history in the Americas."

The article looks into Monte Verde site in Chile (clearly Pre-Clovis, despite current arguments that it is much more recent), the 130 ky old mastodon bones from the Cerutti site in California, the Hartley site (37 ky) in New Mexico, and the 23 ky old footsteps from White Sands.

It correctly argues in favor of an Older Land Bridge between Asia and America: "During periods of low sea level, including Marine Isotope Stage 5e (~130,000 years ago), the Bering land bridge connected northeastern Asia to Alaska, providing a viable (though harsh) migration route for Pleistocene megafauna and, potentially, archaic hominins such as the Denisovans."

I found the comment of admixture within America (Denisovans and modern humans) extremely interesting; it explains the "...elevated Denisovan signature. First, it might indicate a major admixture event occurring in ancestral populations prior to entry into the Americas, resulting in sustained higher levels of Denisovan ancestry in certain lineages. It could alternatively reflect more complex regional population dynamics, such as secondary admixture events occurring within the Americas, potentially involving remnant populations carrying substantial Denisovan ancestry from earlier migrations. This hypothesis implies that Denisovan genetic influence in the Americas may not have been uniformly diluted over time but instead persisted regionally or was periodically refreshed by contacts with isolated groups."

The author argues that "Recent archaeological findings further complicate the picture. Several controversial sites in eastern Beringia, including Old Crow Basin, Chandalar River, and the deeper strata of Bluefish Caves, have produced lithic tools and faunal remains that some researchers interpret as evidence of hominin activity dating from approximately 80,000 to 100,000 years ago. These dates precede the known arrival of anatomically modern humans in northeast Asia, raising the possibility that these occupations reflect short-lived incursions by Denisovan groups during glacial periods when the Bering Land Bridge was exposed. While the artifact status of some materials is debated, the timing and geography align with what is known about Denisovan range and climate-accessible corridors."

The paper suggests some potential avenues for further research, including genetics: "high-resolution mapping of archaic DNA segments in Indigenous populations, may help distinguish between Denisovan ancestry acquired in Asia and ancestry potentially inherited from archaic populations present in the Americas. Third, paleoenvironmental reconstructions of Beringia during MIS 5e and related periods can refine our understanding of when and how migrations might have occurred."

The article is well structured and presents the evidence in a straightforward manner. No controversy, just facts. Well done!

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Why did the Clovis First Hypothesis last so long?

If the Clovis first hypothesis or theory was wrong, why was it so pervasive? How could it have last for so long? Many factors contributed to its acceptance, consolidation, prevalence, and survival for over 40 years (1935-1975), and a protracted battle over the next 50 years, that is still being waged.

Today's post will explore the reasons behind the love affair of academia with the Clovis first ideology.

I am indebted to the excellent outline posted by https://x.com/MoundLore on X (twitter) which can be seen online here, which helped me organize my thoughts on this matter. I don't believe that the Clovis First theory was a deliberate conspiracy. Instead, it was a combination of different factors that had a catalyzing effect.

1. Initial Acceptance and a Grand Theory

When Howard proposed the Clovis culture, defined its age, and its big-game hunting society, North American archaeology suffered from many problems and lacked a sound, unifying theory:

• There were no dependable dating techniques (eg. radiocarbon dating was developed in the late 1940s, luminescence dating in the 1960s), only stratigraphic ones, which were unreliable. Deep, older dates were not trusted. In fact, the origin of the human fossils in the Old World were dated to a few thousands or tens of thousands of years at that time (~25 ky for Cro-Magnons and ~50 ky for Neanderthals, 500 ky for the Heidelberg man, and 1 My for the Pithecanthropus
• Most scholars had been formed under the influence of Aleš Hrdlic̄ka who imposed his belief that the Native Americans had arrived via Bering Strait, from Asia, recently (initially not more than 3,000 years ago, later increased to 10,000 years after the Folsom stone tools were discovered in the late 1920s). The late arrival was supported by Hrdlic̄ka's conviction that Amerindians descended from Asians (who they resembled), and did so after the Mongoloid race had differentiated (sorry for the term, but it was used at that time), he stubbornly refused to accept any pre-modern (i.e. Neanderthal) presence in America. Therefore, most American archaeologists supported a recent arrival of the ancestors of Native Americans to the New World.
• The natives were considered a lower race, weak, and feeble-minded, and scientists collected artifacts, bones, skulls, and ignored native myths and beliefs while trying to interpret the data.

The discovery of the Folsom site in the late 1920s shook the archaeological community, man-made stone tools were found beside extinct Pleistocene bisons. Humans had lived in America for at least 10,000 or more years. This was followed by the even earlier Clovis points that were then found in different locations across North America, of a similar late Pleistocene age (breaking with the previous dogma set by Hrdlic̄ka), and coinciding with the demise of the megafauna like mammoths, large bisons, camels, and giant sloths, was a catalyst that brought all these elements together into a new race of big-game hunters 12,000 years ago, that took the New World by surprise as soon as the ice sheets retreated. Nice and neat, intellectualy comfortable, no loose ends.

Although there had been some isolated claims about early Pleistocene findings, they had been silenced by academic orthodoxy before the Folsom and Clovis discoveries (Jenks, 1932 and Jenks, 1937, and his Minnesota Man), and the Natchez human pelvis found below the level of megafauna remains (Wilson, 1895).

Clovis provided a coherent framework for scientists to work with, based on their preconceptions and assumptions. Soon Clovis sites appeared across America.

2. Clovis becomes Mainstream

The acceptance, and further discoveries fueled publications, fed collections, expanded slots in museums, and became included in textbooks. Clovis was taught in college to a new generation of archaeologists. The general public became aware of the Clovis people.

Each new site contributed to reinforcing the preceeding findings. Academic careers were built on these discoveries. Tenures and publications resulted from research projects linked to Clovis.

The outcome of this process was the entrenchment of the Clovis idea in the archaeological community. Funding and grants were awarded to projects that would support the Clovis notion. Challenging theories were discarded and went unfunded.

Even if a scholar went ahead and produced research that conflicted with the Clovis orthodoxy, it was rejected during the peer review process. Journals refused to publish them.

3. Resistance to Change

Thomas Kuhn outlined the concept of paradigm shift in science, it is a natural process by which theories and basic assumptions change. Science moves forward in bursts, when a revolution ousts an entrenched orthodoxy (an existing "paradigm") replacing it with a new one.

As anomalies appear (sites that are older than the established paradigm), tensions build up, and before the crisis, the orthodoxy fights back. Accepting a new paradigm implies rewriting history, modifying books, upsetting established courses in colleges, modifying museum layouts. Change is costly and people resist it.

Watchdogs appear. The role of Hrdlic̄ka as the gatekeeper, and watchdog, in the case of Clovis First, was played by C. Vance Haynes. His work at Tule Springs, a site located close to Las Vegas, Nevada, US, converted him into an ardent supporter of the Clovis First theory. He has been described as the Godfather within the "Clovis mafia".

Haynes research at Tule Springs led him to believe that there had been no humans at that site prior to 13 ky BP. There were animal remains spanning tens of thousands of years, but the only humans were the Clovis, and they appeared all of a sudden, 13,000 years ago.

In my next post I will mention Haynes and a pre-Clovis tool that he found, and ignored, possibly 30,000 years old, there at Tule Springs.

Haynes and the notion of a late ice-free corridor (published in the mid 1960s), made the theory invulnerable to attacks. Haynes refuted, identified trivial weaknesses, attacked, and disqualified other findings.

An online article in the Smithsonian magazine describes the negation and suppression of pre-Clovis dates: "It was a brutal experience, something that Cinq-Mars once likened to the Spanish Inquisition. At conferences, audiences paid little heed to his presentations, giving short shrift to the evidence. Other researchers listened politely, then questioned his competence. The result was always the same. “When Jacques proposed [that Bluefish Caves was] 24,000, it was not accepted,” says William Josie, director of natural resources at the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation in Old Crow. In his office at the Canadian Museum of History, Cinq-Mars fumed at the wall of closed minds. Funding for his Bluefish work grew scarce: his fieldwork eventually sputtered and died."

4. Religion

The Christian Bible upholds certain dogma, like the Noachian flood, the dispersal of races after the failed Babylon tower project, and an early (a few millennia) origin of mankind (God's creation of Adam and Eve). These pose time constraints that cause friction with scientific theories.

There are several weird ideas related to religion involving the peopling of America, these are some examples that I found online: The Clovis people died in Noah's flood, Clovis people descended from Noah arrived by boat after the Flood, they reached America after the Babel dispersion.

It may not seem important, but don't forget that a 2025 Religious poll found that 57% of adult Americans believe that Hell exists, 49% believe that the Bible is 100% accurate in its teachings, 68% believe in an unchanging God and 71% assume him as a Trinity (God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit).

5. Cultural Dominance

But what about the Native Americans. These people have their own creation myths, oral traditions dating back in time that state that they have always been here, in America, since Time inmemorial.

Now, in a more woke period, Richard W. Stoffle, Kathleen A. Van Vlack, Heather H. Lim, Alannah Bell, Landon Yarrington, 2024 note that the Native Americans ancient beliefs are gaining relevance among scholars. These authors acknowledge that it wasn't always the case:

"... the Clovis first theory... was the dominant interpretation of the past throughout most of the 20th century and into the 21st century. It precluded the acceptance of Native American Pleistocene observations as they were presented in Native rock paintings, rock peckings, and oral history that depicted and interpreted large Pleistocene animals and glacial wetland ecology. During this time, it was the standard practice of western scholars and land managers to reject Native interpretations of ancient times. Pleistocene-specific observations were even removed from ethnographic reports by land managers and debunked in science papers and journals because Native American observations did not align with what western scientists deemed to be true"

Native Americans were silenced and ignored. They didn't support the Clovis First theory, or in fact any theory that puts their position as "First People", or, as we call them in South America, Pueblos Originarios (Original People).

One of the few natives to reject the Clovis First theory was a Native American named Vine Deloria Jr. (1933-2005), he was a lawyer, theologist, university professor and scholar. As a Standing Rock Lakota, he held a strong point of view about Western civilization and academia, and its influence on how history is written. He was an advocate for the rights and claims of Native Americans.

In his controversial and provocative book Red Earth White Lies, published in 1995 he criticizes Western science and puts forward many pseudoscientific notions, for instance, that geology is mistaken, humans and dinosaurs were contemporaries, high levels of carbon dioxide and a fluctuating gravity coefficient lead to gigantism, and the theory of Evolution is wrong, just to mention a few. However he does hit the nail on the head when he suggests that scientists revere orthodoxy, and science is essentially a religion, with its scientific myths.

It should be noted that Deloria believed that the oral traditions of Native Americans accurately describe what happened in the past. Their versions should be considered the truth until science can provide strong, data-backed evidence to refute them. This concept also had a political point of view, to ratify the Native American people's oral tradition as being the correct interpretation of historic events, such as the treaties they were forced to sign with the U.S. or Canada.

Stoffle et al., 2025, acknowledge Deloria's work and adopt a critical view science's attitude: "that there is no Native truth unless it is supported by western truth —an argument that only further validates Deloria's claims that Native American knowledge and history are being suppressed by the limitations of western science."

Philip J. Deloria, Vine's son, wrote that his father's book is hard to defend. However, he understands where his father was going with it. Vine Deloria believed that the Beringia crossing into America made Native Americans migrants, they were one of many who migrated to America, with the Western Europeans being the last. The Natives did so early, but were migrants just the same we are all migrants in the New World. He also disagreed with the notion that these first people entered a vacant, virgin continent, untouched by humans, it wasn't owned, it was there to be taken. The idea that these new-arrivals then overkilled the megafauna to extinction, a gross violation of the idea that Native Americans understood their environment and were stewards, led him to propose catastrophic events leading to the extinction.

Conclusion

Only when irrefutable evidence had accumulated, and genetic information backed by these earlier archaeological dates put forward early dates for genetic splits in Asian lineages, did the Clovis First yield. Slowly, but inevitably the pre-Clovis field gained momentum and is now the prevailing dogma, though, some holdouts of the former orthodoxy remain, like Surovell.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Topper Site, South Carolina, US - 50 ky old?

Topper site is located in Allendale County, South Carolina, US (see it in Google Maps). It was named after a local who showed it to Albert C. Goodyear, as a chert quarry, and a good spot to look for paleo-Indian stone tools. Goodyear first excavated the site in 1986, and he recovered Clovis-style tools there in the 1990s.

Digging Deeper

Reflecting the mindset of that time (which still prevails), Goodyear said that after hitting the Clovis stone points roughly 3 feet (1 m) below the surface, the dig stopped. After all, there were no people in America before the Clovis arrived (How many times have I written that American archaeologists don't dig deep enough to find older evidence of people in America?)

Goodyear is quoted as saying: "Back then, I wasn’t particularly interested in, or even believed that there probably was any serious pre-Clovis in North America... You don’t look for what you don’t believe in, so I sort of stopped there. I wasn’t finding any artifacts, so to me that was the end of the dig." This is something I have mentioned in previous posts. Nobody digs deep enough to find anything older than 15 ky in America!

But, prodded by the pre-Clovis Monte Verde site in Chile, and the fact that chert of this site would have been a valuable asset for making stone tools to earlier people reaching the area, Goodyear dug deeper (4 meters or 13 feet below the Clovis layer). His efforts were rewarded, he found older tools that were different from the Clovis fluted point style. These tools were relatively simple. They were dated by OSL (luminescence) dating methods to 15.2 ky ago; definitively pre-Clovis.

During his initial explorations (see Goodyear, 2000) he reported that "this date would indicate that the preClovis artifacts, which are found predominantly in the lower half of this unit, are at least 16,000 years old and probably older."

Pre-Clovis stone tools, Topper Site. Fig. 4 in Goodyear, 2000

Digging even deeper into older sediments Goodyear unearthed a chert stone, now known as "Big Red", that shows evidence of human flaking. Goodyear says is probably 50,000 years old Source.

In his 2018 research article (Goodyear, A., 2018. The Pre-Clovis Occupation of the Topper Site, Allendale County, South Carolina. Early Human Life on the Southeastern Coastal Plain), Goodyear states that "Below a substantial Clovis occupation lies a preClovis assemblage consisting of core and flake technologies associated with two Pleistocene alluvial deposits. The deepest occupation is buried in a meander phase terrace with radiocarbon dates in excess of 50,000 years. Indirectly associated radiocarbon dates of the upper alluvial zone indicates an age of 25,000 to 38,000 years ago. Topper is currently oldest radiocarbon dated preClovis site in the Western Hemisphere."

See also another paper published in 2018: Goodyear and Sain, 2018, The Pre-Clovis Occupation of the Topper Site, Allendale County, South Carolina🔒 (free access to the paper🔓). This paper clearly confirms the early dates for this site:

"In their appraisal of the dating of Topper, Waters et al. (2009:1309) reported that it dated diachronously, from minimally about 15,000 yrs B.P. to at least 50,000 or more years. e radiocarbon dating of the WPAS deposit with the cores farther up the terrace ranging from 25,330 B.P. to 28,810 B.P. is the probable minimal age of the upper pre-Clovis assemblage. at being the case, the beginning of the site as found in the Pleistocene ter-race would still be minimally about 50,000 yrs B.P. or more. A time span of 25,000 to 50,000 B.P. or longer is still a remarkable amount of time for a lithic technology to persist, at least by New World standards."

Clovis First Reaction

Of course, Clovis First supporters have had their say suggesting that the old tools are not man-made, but rocks shaped by natural processes, mere geofacts, the site's old ages are also doubted, and they suggest that animal burrows that disturbed the soil, causes younger tools to move downwards and appear deeper, and therefore older. See this article and this one. A 2009 paper politely recognizes the pre-Clovis tools but in a very conditional way, and casts doubts about them being man-made: "Hypothesized pre-Clovis artifacts derive from several stratigraphic units below the Clovis horizon at Topper. However, the anthropogenic origin of the “Topper assemblage” has yet to be adequately demonstrated and it may be natural in origin..."

The Younger Dryas Meteor

Even Surovell in 2009, the person who wrote the Clovis-strikes-back paper about Monte Verde analyzed the Topper Site to discredit a paper that proposed that a meteor impact led to the megafauna extinction and a period known as Younger Dryas (Firestone, 2009). If it was a meteor and not big-game Clovis hunters that killed the mammoths, it undermines the Clovis First theory. As expected from a Clovis-firster, Surovell didn't find proof of any meteor. However, a re-analysis of the site by LeCompte and Goodeayear, 2012 did.

The Younger Dryas event took place between 12.9 and 11.7 kya, and was a sudden cooling event that interrupted the warming period that followed the end of the last Ice Age. Temperatures dropped almost 10°C (18°F), affecting plants, anmilas and humans. The causes are under study. One theory suggests that the freshwater influx from glacial ice melt into the North Atlantic affected the circulation of the warm Gulf Stream current, another posits that a comet or meteor broke up in the upper atmosphere causing a "nuclear winter". But in the Southern Hemisphere, the effect was the opposite, it warmed up!

Personally, I don't have an opinion about the Younger Dryas meteor, but I will post about it in the near future.

The meteoric impact forms part of the conflict between Clovis-firsters and pre-Clovis supporters. Goodyear and LeCompte found more meteoric dust (microspherules) in the Clovis tools sediment layer at Topper and dusting the Clovis tools, but, after removing them, the soil beneatht them had 30 times less microspherules, proof that they fell during the Clovis time. This is rejected by Clovis First supporters, they believe that the Clovis people spread out and hunted the megafauna to extinction and dissipated into other cultures. The meteor with its environmental impact refutes both explanations.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Clovis First

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 hunters and mammoths. University Press of Colorado, from Frontiers in Colorado Paleoindian Archaeology: From the Dent Site to the Rocky Mountains, edited by Robert H. Brunswig and Bonnie L. Pitblado, 2014, 2 nd ed.

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.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

More on Monte Verde and the Clovis fighting back

In my previous post about a paper published in Science by Surovell et al, suggesting that the Monte Verde site in Chile is far younger than previously reported, I hinted at a Clovis-first bias in Surovell. I mentioned some of his work that revealed his preference for a late peopling of America, today's post wants to make clear that Surovell does not agree with the notion of an early peopling of the New World.

Below I quote an article that quotes Surovell on this new paper. (Source).

In this article published in a Wyoming newspaper, Surovell states that he was struck by the notion of an early peopling of America. He said: "How do you get people to southern Chile over 14,000 years ago, while leaving basically an invisible record further north? Occasionally, we find remarkable things, but Monte Verde was a statistical outlier in terms of age, location, and human behavior" My reply is lack of imagination.

I can suggest how this happened: people reached America long ago, say 30 kya, and marched south, dispersing across the New World (this is equally valid for any date, 50, 100, 900 kya) and some groups died out, others survived, but as this happened long ago, they are several meters (or feet) below the level commonly dug up by archaeolgists. Nobody digs deep enough to unearth anything older than the orthodox age of 15 (max) kya.

If you don't dig deeper you will not find evidence. Nevertheless, there are several sites across the Americas showing pre-Clovis remains. But, mindsets are hard to crack!

The article in the Wyoming paper says "Even as he taught classes at UW that included Monte Verde, he was stuck on how unusual it was for a site of that age to exist so far south. It left him with a desire to return to the important site, collect more evidence, and either confirm or refute the work from the past."

Well, if people arrived 50 kya, why should a site 18 ky old surprise us! Only if we believe that humans reached America much later (bias!)

Surovell goes on record stating that "All of these pre-Clovis sites are unusual, unreplicated finds." Well, considering that most scholars, including this guy are so reluctant to consider other alternatives, it is not unusual to find that these sites are "unreplicated", funding goes to mainstream, orthodox academics. Those on the fringe find it difficult to finance their research.

Considering the mindest of current U.S. average citizens (flat-earthers, antivaxxers, anti-evolution - pro-creationists, and science deniers) I am not surprised that they stand by outdated ideas from the early 1900s and support a late peopling of America.

Surovell admits his preference for the Clovis First hypothesis: "Based on his career of research, buffeted by the findings at Monte Verde, Surovell believes there’s more merit to the original “Clovis First” model that many archaeologists have discounted because of the discovery of Monte Verde." Surovell says: "We have hundreds of Clovis sites that have been independently found by hundreds of people... Of those sites, a couple dozen have produced the exact same style of spear point that are all unusual in the way they’re made, and date exactly to the same time. We’ve found the same thing at different locations in North and South America. You can say that for Clovis. You can’t say that for pre-Clovis." I rest my case. Prejudice and preconceptions should not guide science.

In case you are wondering about me, this is a blog, not a scientific paper, I am not a paid University academic, I hold no chair in any College, I am a layman. However, I expect a higher standard from formal scholars, paid researchers, people who should go into the field with an open mind and let the facts show the way. In this case, I feel that prejudice, bias, and preconceptions lead to finding "evidence" to support dogma.

"He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors."
—Thomas Jefferson

I believe that science should try to uncover objective facts. But, it is flawed by human shortcomings like preconceptions. The scientific method should help avoid bias due to errors in the design of research, and the interpretation of data. However, I see paper after paper reinforcing previous (unchallenged) beliefs, something known as "confirmation bias" or, outright papers whose aim is to discredit 50 years of thorough research based on the unconfirmed assumption that humans reached America less than 15 kya. Open minds, let the facts show the way... that is the way.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Monte Verde site in Chile is far younger than thought!

I have posted several times menitoning the Monte Verde site in Chilean Patagonia, in the Lake District (see it on Google maps). It has been proclaimed and dated as the oldest site in Southern South America (and most of America) with an age of around 15,000 to 18,000 years. However, new research published in Science by Surovell et al., last week, suggests that it is far more recent, just 8.2 to 4.2 ky old!

The research paper is this one: Todd A. Surovell et al., A mid-Holocene age for Monte Verde challenges the timeline of human colonization of South America. Science 391, 1283-1288 (2026). DOI: 10.1126/science.adw9217.

The Very Old Age of Monte Verde (until now)

First reported by the team that had excavated the site since 1977, Tom D. Dillehay & Michael B. Collins, 1988, in an article published in Nature, the authors stated that "We report here two carbon-14 dates from charcoal taken from cultural features associated with the older materials of ∼33,000 yr BP. These findings provide additional evidence that people colonized the Americas much earlier than was previously thought."

Above is a view of the site (Source), it is set on the western side of the Andes in an area with forest coverage, by a stream. This area was heavily glaciated during the Ice Ages which carved out the lakes in the regin (Llanquihue, Todos los Santos, Ranco, etc.) it is also close to several active volcanoes (Osorno, Puyehue, Puntiagudo, Calbuco), and not far from the Pacific Ocean.

Dillehay et al, 2008 gave old, but not so old, dates to the site: "Remains of nine species of marine algae were recovered from hearths and other features at Monte Verde II, an upper occupational layer, and were directly dated between 14,220 and 13,980 calendar years before the present (∼12,310 and 12,290 carbon-14 years ago)." and again, Dillehay et al, 2015, an old date: "New evidence of stone artifacts, faunal remains, and burned areas suggests discrete horizons of ephemeral human activity in a sandur plain setting radiocarbon and luminescence dated between at least ~18,500 and 14,500 cal BP."

Over the course of 38 years, the site has been proclaimed as ancient, among the oldest in America, and it surely is, but now, controversy about its age has flared up again.

Much more recent: Clovis First Strikes Back

I must be fair and let you know that Todd Surovell, author of the paper suggesting a much later date for Monte Verde, does not believe in an early peopling of America. This position is clear, as we can see in Surovell et al., 2022: "[Our] findings support the hypothesis that the first human arrival to the New World occurred by at least 14,200 years ago in Beringia and by approximately 13,000 years ago in the temperate latitudes of North America. Strong evidence for human presence before those dates has yet to be identified in the archaeological record."

Surovell et al., 2018 also criticize early arrival, question the continuity of pre-Clovis and later Clovis paleoindians, and the Pacific coastal route vs. the inland one (favored by Surovell).

Having mentioned this, below I will comment Sturovell's new 2026 paper, and what it says about Monte Verde, its age and the arrival routes into America:

The researches looked at the sedimentary layout of the Monte Verde site, erosion, and volcanic ash, and concluded that it is half or even one-quarter of the formerly acknowledged age!

The authors state the following (I highlight the important part) "We argue that radiocarbon and luminescence dates from alluvial exposures, in combination with the identification of a tephra dated to 11,000 years B.P. stratigraphically underlying the archaeological component, suggest that Monte Verde cannot be older than the Middle Holocene (8200 to 4200 years B.P.). With colonization no longer anchored by Monte Verde, our revised chronology supports a more recent date of human arrival to South America."

Their analysis of sedimentary deposition of glacial sediments, volcanic ashes, and tree trunks that were later eroded is neat and seems coherent, and of course, the will to validate their preconceptions and the beliefs they support (like a late peopling of America).

Pushing their Clovis cause, the authors caution that "...any inferences made about the peopling of the Americas based on a Late Pleistocene date for this site should be reevaluated. Although a pre-Clovis human presence in the Americas is accepted by many archaeologists, a Holocene age for Monte Verde leaves open the possibility of later initial colonization. The acceptance of the pre-Clovis age of Monte Verde led some to reject migration through the ice-free corridor as a possible route of initial entry, and a coastal route along the Cordilleran ice margin has been suggested to be more likely. Although our findings do not preclude the possibility of earlier dates of initial entry to the Americas, they do support an initial interior migration into continental North America as a viable colonization hypothesis. As demonstrated here, the age of the MV-II component should not be used as a constraint or check on colonization models derived from other sources, including the genetics of modern or ancient populations. Our findings also underscore the critical need for independent study and verification of early sites."

I look forward to comments and rebuttals. This is indeed an interesting development!

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

20,000 year ago date for the peopling of America (Oct. 2025 paper)

A brand new paper published in ScienceAdvances on October 22, 2025 (David B. Madsen et al., Characterizing the American Upper Paleolithic. Sci. Adv.11, eady9545(2025). DOI:10.1126/sciadv.ady9545) compared the stone tool technologies in American and Northeast Asian sites and dated them analyzing their evolution, location and timing to conclude a window for the peopling of America.

The study finds that North American stone tools from sites across the subcontinent dated 13.5 to 20 ky arose from a style of projectile points that seems to have appeared originally in Japan, in Hokkaido some 20,000 years ago. So, they suggest that the North American core-and-blade and bifacial technology has its roots in NE Asia around this time, and was taken there as the first arrivals reached the New World.

The paper characterizes these tools as: "Both the core-and-blade and bifacial techniques were used to support the production of a variety of lanceolate and stemmed projectile points. These are usually small, often less than 5 cm in length but occasionally reach up to ~10 cm long at sites such as Cooper’s Ferry/Nipéhe."

Then, some 13,000 years ago, the Native Americans shifted to more sturdy stone tools, these were the Haskett and Clovis tools, for spears and javelins.

This is a clear indication that Clovis wasn't "First" after all.

The authors find that the dates stands somewhere around 20,000 years ago:

...we suggest that this initial migration occurred sometime about 20,000 years ago. Praetorius et al. (101), 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 (102) 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 two references cited, Praetorius and Steffen can be found below:

101. S. K. Praetorius, J. R. Alder, A. Condron, A. C. Mix, M. H. Walczak, B. E. Caissie, J. M. Erlandson, Ice and ocean constraints on early human migrations into North America along the Pacific coast. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 120, e2208738120 (2023). Online.
102. M. L. Steffen, New age constraints for human entry into the Americas on the north Pacific coast. Sci. Rep. 14, 4291 (2024). Online.

Slowly but surely, studies are pushing back the date of entry into America. I am an optimist and expect even older dates to be accepted in the next decade (like 30-40,000 years B.P.).

Below is Fig. 9 from this paper, and I quote its caption fully. Surprisingly there were NO STONE TOOLS in Beringia between 15 and 39 ky! probably due to the fact that the sites are underwater, on the now submerged continental shelf.

Fig. 9. Summary diagram showing the chronological relationships between lithic assemblages in the PSHK, Beringia, and the AUP. Note the complete absence of lithic assemblages dating to between ~30,000 and ~15,000 cal BP in Beringia. Note also that the common features of AUP assemblages appear several thousand years earlier in PSHK stone tool assemblages. Finally, note the chronological relationship between the stemmed and lanceolate points of the AUP, and the appearance of the larger, and more robust lanceolate Haskett and Clovis points characteristic of the later Western Stemmed Tradition and Paleoindian periods. Source and see it online

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025by Austin Whittall © 

Gault Site, Texas, USA : 16,000 to 21,000 years old

The paper about Gault site in TX, USA was published back in 2018. And it provides evidence of an early presence of humans in that area 16 to 20.000 years ago.

The authors show that stone tools that were dated by optically stimulated luminescence and the dates obtained are "~16 to 20 thousand years ago" they therefore suggest that this indicates "an early human occupation in North America before at least ~16 thousand years ago. Significantly, this assemblage exhibits a previously unknown, early projectile point technology unrelated to Clovis. Within a wider context, this evidence suggests that Clovis technology spread across an already regionalized, indigenous population." Therefore the Clovis people were not the first.

Source: Thomas J. Williams, Michael B. Collins, Kathleen Rodrigues, William Jack Rink, Nancy Velchoff, Amanda Keen-Zebert, Anastasia Gilmer, Charles D. Frederick, Sergio J. Ayala, Elton R. Prewitt. Evidence of an early projectile point technology in North America at the Gault Site, Texas, USA. Science Advances, 2018; 4 (7): eaar5954 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aar5954

Gault Assemblage artifacts (A to D, F, and L) Bifaces. (E) Blade core. (G) Quartz projectile point. (H and I) Projectile points. (K) Projectile point tip. (M, V, and W) Blade. (N) Unifacial tool. (O and T) Gravers. (P) Discoidal biface. (Q) End scraper. (R to U) Modified flake tools. (X and Y) Lanceolate projectile points. Descriptions are given in the Supplementary Materials. Fig. 3 in the paper

The authors unearthed stone tools that were fashioned using a technology that was distinct from the later Clovis tool technology, and is unique in America. They are old "from 21.7 ± 1.4 ka to 16.7 ± 1.1 ka." The paper concludes that "Gault Site demonstrates the presence of a previously unknown projectile point technology in North America before ~16 ka."

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Nature article supports arrival of first Americans as far back as 57 Ky ago

An article published in Nature today (The timing and effect of the earliest human arrivals in North America Becerra-Valdivia, L., Higham, T. Nature (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2491-6 ) finds that:

"The data obtained show that humans were probably present before, during and immediately after the Last Glacial Maximum (about 26.5–19 thousand years ago)2,3 but that more widespread occupation began during a period of abrupt warming, Greenland Interstadial 1 (about 14.7–12.9 thousand years before 2000)4. We also identify the near-synchronous commencement of Beringian, Clovis and Western Stemmed cultural traditions, and an overlap of each with the last dates for the appearance of 18 now-extinct faunal genera. Our analysis suggests that the widespread expansion of humans through North America was a key factor in the extinction of large terrestrial mammals."

It is a first step in the right direction, and clearly states: "If transatlantic migration is set aside and an Asian origin assumed, the antiquity and distribution of the early sites suggest that the initial crossing of the 48th parallel north occurred either (i) during the later part of Marine Isotope Stage 3 (57–29 ka)36, when ice and sea level estimates37–39 indicate that land passage through Beringia was unlikely or interrupted, and an ice-free corridor between the Laurentide and Cordilleran Ice Sheets was probably present39 (with evidence of terrestrial landscapes occurring between 48 and 40 ka40) or (ii) during the LGM terminus, when the Bering land bridge was viable but the ice-free corridor was inaccessible41,42. Both possibilities sug-gest the earliest arrivals to North America had some degree of littoral adaptation."

The Clovis First theory has bean dealt a great blow! The authors write: "the previously accepted model (termed ‘Clovis-first’)—suggesting that the first inhabitants of the Americas were linked with the Clovis tradition, a complex marked by distinctive fluted lithic points1—has been effectively refuted".

It mentions several Pre-Clovis sites: "pre-Clovis sites show the earli-est evidence for cultural occupation in stratigraphic component C of Chiquihuite Cave (Mexico) at 33,150–31,405 cal., before the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) (from 26.5 to 20–19 ka2,3). Several sites appear to be occupied later, during or immediately after the LGM. These include Gault (26,435–17,385cal.), Meadowcroft Rockshelter (24,335–18,620cal.) and Cactus Hill (20,585–18,970cal.) (Fig.2a). In eastern Beringia, Bluefish Caves is represented by a single date obtained on a humanly modified bone sample (24,035–23,310cal.) dating squarely to the LGM..

It is encouraging, and should undo the dark work of William Henry Holmes of the Smithsonian Institution, Thomas Chamberlin of the United States Geological Survey and Ales Hrdlicka (of the Smithsonian) who refused to accept that humans had reached America before the end of the last Ice Age. They imposed their ideas and only accepted an earlier (but not too early) date when the Folsom points were found in 1927 followed by the Clovis ones in the 1930s. They were irrefutable confirmation of ancient humans in the Americas during the Pleistocene.

But pushing the dates beyond 12-13,000 years has proven difficult. Let's hope this article marks a new trend in the field.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2020 by Austin Whittall ©