WEBVTT - Ep. 298: The Mystery of Clovis 0:00:05.519 --> 0:00:09.280 It's just it's just such mystery and that's the that's 0:00:09.320 --> 0:00:12.360 why these are so cool. Yeah, and the fact that 0:00:12.400 --> 0:00:17.520 we could find these Clovis points, this technology that is 0:00:17.920 --> 0:00:21.800 indicative of this time period can be found from Alaska 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:25.480 to Florida, from Maine to New Mexico. 0:00:25.239 --> 0:00:26.960 Oh, even Central America. 0:00:27.200 --> 0:00:30.600 I mean they these people covered the continent. Yes, so 0:00:30.640 --> 0:00:32.800 you could you could find one of these in your regard. 0:00:32.640 --> 0:00:34.400 Oh yeah, definitely, one hundred percent. 0:00:36.400 --> 0:00:40.839 If you consider yourself a connoisseur of wild places, wild history, 0:00:41.120 --> 0:00:44.279 and the wild human story on this continent, this episode 0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:47.400 is for you. We're diving into the mysteries of the 0:00:47.479 --> 0:00:50.240 Clovist people, and if you don't know who they are, 0:00:50.800 --> 0:00:55.240 Brent Reeves, no problem, because the experts don't really know either. 0:00:55.920 --> 0:01:01.080 But modern archaeology is uncovering some incredible new stuff. We're 0:01:01.080 --> 0:01:03.959 gonna learn about the Clovis type site in New Mexico, 0:01:04.360 --> 0:01:08.240 what a Clovis point is, We're gonna dismantle the Clovis 0:01:08.319 --> 0:01:12.760 first theory, and we'll get into how archaeology can be 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:16.760 used as the political weapon. The ride will be rocky, 0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:19.559 but I really doubt that you're gonna want to miss 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:25.399 this one. One quick thing before we get started. Brent Reeves, 0:01:25.640 --> 0:01:29.679 Bear Newcomb and I will be at BHA's Black Bear 0:01:29.720 --> 0:01:33.800 Bonanza in Bentonville, Arkansas, on March first. We'll be there 0:01:33.840 --> 0:01:38.000 all day. This is an event all about black bear hunting. 0:01:38.319 --> 0:01:42.400 Ton of Fun and Bear nukelem and E's Bear Hunt 0:01:42.440 --> 0:01:45.760 Spring Bear Hunt in Montana. The film for that will 0:01:45.760 --> 0:01:49.280 be up on the Meat Eater YouTube channel on February twentieth. 0:01:49.760 --> 0:02:01.600 Don't miss it. My name is Clay nukemb And. This 0:02:01.640 --> 0:02:05.760 is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten 0:02:05.960 --> 0:02:10.160 but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where 0:02:10.280 --> 0:02:14.120 we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives 0:02:14.160 --> 0:02:19.920 close to the land. Presented by FHF Gear, American made, 0:02:20.080 --> 0:02:23.800 purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be 0:02:23.880 --> 0:02:39.320 as rugged as the place as we explore. I'm in Ohio. 0:02:39.760 --> 0:02:44.280 I'm at Kent State University. I'm here to meet doctor Metton. 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:48.400 Aaron Meton's going to take me into his lab. He 0:02:48.600 --> 0:02:52.880 is the expert of the country on Clovi style stone 0:02:52.960 --> 0:02:57.520 points and really just the stone age there. He is. 0:02:57.960 --> 0:03:01.239 Hey man, I'm good. Good to see you, bro, you too, 0:03:01.280 --> 0:03:03.880 Come on in heck yeah, thanks for meeting me on 0:03:03.919 --> 0:03:04.520 a Saturday. 0:03:04.600 --> 0:03:07.120 Oh God, this is Henry bad Way. 0:03:06.880 --> 0:03:09.959 He looks like a cross between a beagle and a 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:10.720 basket of hound. 0:03:10.800 --> 0:03:13.959 He is a cross between a beagle and a Cavalier Spaniel. 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:20.519 Oh really, Henry com what are you daring? Doctor Aaron 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:24.080 is more personable than you might envision a stuffy archaeologist. 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:27.079 He leads me to the fourth floor and we enter 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:30.160 through a metal framed door with one of those tall 0:03:30.240 --> 0:03:34.920 rectangular windows with wire in the glass. Meton's given off 0:03:34.960 --> 0:03:37.800 the energy of a second grader taking his parents into 0:03:37.840 --> 0:03:41.320 his homeroom class for the first time. I've traveled from 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:46.760 the Ozarks to Ohio to see his experimental Archaeology lab. 0:03:47.280 --> 0:03:50.920 It's the only one like it in the world. Here 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:53.800 they test ancient weaponry and tools. 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:58.480 Yeah, welcome to the Kent State Experimental Archaeology Lab. 0:03:59.120 --> 0:03:59.880 It's the whole wing. 0:04:00.320 --> 0:04:02.560 We're pretty lucky because this used to be storage before 0:04:02.800 --> 0:04:04.920 I got here. But then they gave me the whole 0:04:04.960 --> 0:04:06.880 wing and said to build the love of your dreams, 0:04:06.960 --> 0:04:12.000 and so everything you see, everything's a replica from either 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:14.600 I've made, or my students have made, or doctor Michelle 0:04:14.640 --> 0:04:15.680 Beber's made. 0:04:15.440 --> 0:04:20.120 And yeah, so it's like part library, part stone age 0:04:20.160 --> 0:04:24.080 hunting storage shed. I think I'm looking at maybe fifty 0:04:24.160 --> 0:04:29.480 adelaid darts over there. This place is a real nerd hut, 0:04:29.760 --> 0:04:35.320 walled wall, bookshelves, filing cabinets, five gallon buckets, with flint flakes, maps, 0:04:35.760 --> 0:04:39.320 and random stone points lying around everywhere. It's just the 0:04:39.400 --> 0:04:42.560 kind of place to begin to tell the big story 0:04:42.720 --> 0:04:45.719 of ancient America. But when you're here, it's kind of 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:50.320 weird calling this place America because the Paleolithic world knew 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:54.880 nothing of such a place. Calling this place America is 0:04:54.960 --> 0:04:57.920 like someone getting a new name after they've become an 0:04:57.960 --> 0:05:03.039 old old man, because human history here is deep, and 0:05:03.120 --> 0:05:07.400 this lab is dedicated to the scant but telling details 0:05:07.440 --> 0:05:11.080 we have about this old man we now call America. 0:05:12.240 --> 0:05:14.640 The main thing I noticed that makes this different than 0:05:14.720 --> 0:05:18.120 just like a standard library is the dirt on the floor. Yeah, 0:05:18.360 --> 0:05:22.800 it's like a workshop slash library. There's like boot tracks 0:05:22.839 --> 0:05:25.480 and flint chips and stuff laying around. 0:05:25.760 --> 0:05:28.120 That's the whole lab, right, I mean, this is this 0:05:28.200 --> 0:05:34.400 is very much like a working archaeology and engineering laboratories. 0:05:34.440 --> 0:05:37.800 People are always making stuff and breaking stuff, and you know, 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:41.039 we usually do like a big clean once or twice 0:05:41.040 --> 0:05:43.240 a year, usually once a year. 0:05:44.440 --> 0:05:47.800 But it looks awesome. I love it. I love it. 0:05:47.920 --> 0:05:49.560 So it's yeah, we're real lucky. 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:53.400 Where there are no oxen, the stables are clean, and 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:56.320 it's clear there's some real science going on here. He's 0:05:56.320 --> 0:06:00.760 got machines for smashing stuff. He's got chronographs, life size 0:06:00.800 --> 0:06:05.960 animal archery targets, and enormous collections of ancient stone points. 0:06:06.640 --> 0:06:10.880 And there's a pottery shop in here. So you guys 0:06:10.920 --> 0:06:14.440 are are trying to understand even like a lot of 0:06:14.480 --> 0:06:19.000 the physics of how people use stone tools to survive, 0:06:19.279 --> 0:06:20.960 to kill stuff, to butcher animals. 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:23.600 Oh yeah, Like so we want to understand, like what 0:06:23.760 --> 0:06:27.960 makes an optimal spear point. You have to understand that, Like, 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:30.400 you know, we're dealing with time periods in the Stone 0:06:30.440 --> 0:06:34.200 Age that are hundreds of thousands or millions of years. 0:06:34.960 --> 0:06:40.640 So people had the opportunity to have natural experiments over 0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:43.800 generations to figure out how stuff works. 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:46.640 And we're just playing around. This is like life and death, 0:06:46.720 --> 0:06:48.880 life and death. So they figured out what works. 0:06:48.920 --> 0:06:51.520 And what's amazing is it takes in a lot of 0:06:51.560 --> 0:06:57.000 cases twenty first century cutting edge engineering technology to figure 0:06:57.040 --> 0:07:02.800 out what these folks learned just throughout paying attention and 0:07:02.880 --> 0:07:07.000 really just being observant to what's around them. 0:07:07.360 --> 0:07:11.560 Stone age technology is astonishing. You may remember a meat 0:07:11.600 --> 0:07:14.760 eater video we did with doctor Aaron and doctor David 0:07:14.800 --> 0:07:18.239 Meltzer where myself along with the crew, butchered an entire 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:21.920 bison using stone tools. It's on YouTube. We thought it 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:24.280 was going to take all day, but we finished in 0:07:24.320 --> 0:07:27.480 a couple of hours. It was almost as fast as 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:31.240 using modern knives. Doctor Aaron published a paper on it. 0:07:32.000 --> 0:07:35.040 We're about to dig into this deep history, but I 0:07:35.160 --> 0:07:39.160 first need a little refresher on what archaeology actually is. 0:07:41.400 --> 0:07:46.200 Archaeology is the study of ancient technology, and then we 0:07:46.240 --> 0:07:50.200 can use what we learned from ancient technology to make 0:07:50.280 --> 0:07:55.480 inferences about ancient people's behavior, how they lived, sometimes in 0:07:55.560 --> 0:07:58.800 rare cases, maybe what they believed, stuff like that. 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:03.280 So this is a hard hitting question. What was Indian Jones? 0:08:03.400 --> 0:08:07.880 He was an archaeologist, Now, how was he studying ancient technology? 0:08:08.080 --> 0:08:08.280 Hee? 0:08:08.280 --> 0:08:10.960 With that word is a whole part for me to understand. 0:08:11.120 --> 0:08:14.800 Yeah, all of archaeology would be considered studying ancient technology. 0:08:14.880 --> 0:08:19.400 Yeah, because a pot, a table, a building, the holy Grail, 0:08:19.560 --> 0:08:21.680 the holy grail, that is technology. 0:08:24.120 --> 0:08:28.760 The holy Grail. Technology was amazing, But archaeology studies human 0:08:28.800 --> 0:08:33.520 made stuff that's left behind called artifacts. Future archaeologists will 0:08:33.520 --> 0:08:37.439 be studying iPhones, but the iPhone of the Ice Age 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:40.560 was a tricked out style of point that we're going 0:08:40.600 --> 0:08:44.080 to learn about called the Clovis point. Archaeology fits under 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:49.080 the bigger umbrella of anthropology, which is the study of humans. 0:08:49.720 --> 0:08:53.440 Forgive my ignorance, but I need some more clarification on 0:08:53.520 --> 0:08:57.520 something else. So, okay, where does paleontology fit into go? 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:03.280 So, paleontology is the study of ancient animals, but palantell. 0:09:02.760 --> 0:09:05.560 The intelligence is the study of essentially bone, essentially bone 0:09:05.840 --> 0:09:06.679 in the fossil record. 0:09:06.720 --> 0:09:09.439 That's exactly right. You know, people always you know ASKO, 0:09:09.520 --> 0:09:11.920 do you study dinosaurs? Right? And what I will say 0:09:12.000 --> 0:09:14.720 is I wish I did because that'd be sweet. But 0:09:15.920 --> 0:09:21.199 the last dinosaur went extinct around sixty five million years ago, right. 0:09:21.640 --> 0:09:26.040 The first creature that really kind of is a human 0:09:26.400 --> 0:09:30.600 human like is six to seven million years ago. So 0:09:30.760 --> 0:09:35.880 sixty million years separates the last dinosaur and the first 0:09:36.320 --> 0:09:37.439 human like creature. 0:09:39.200 --> 0:09:41.840 If we were biting into a chicken leg, we've just 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:44.920 been nibbling on the crispy skin, but we're about to 0:09:44.960 --> 0:09:49.120 get into the meat. I want to understand the chronology 0:09:49.200 --> 0:09:53.120 of our understanding of the peopling of America, where they 0:09:53.160 --> 0:09:57.280 came from, and win. This involves a term we're going 0:09:57.360 --> 0:09:59.479 to come to understand intimately. 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:06.559 There was a huge debate in the late eighteen hundreds 0:10:06.559 --> 0:10:09.320 early nineteen hundreds as to whether or not there was 0:10:09.360 --> 0:10:13.720 a Stone Age period in the New World, right, because 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:17.240 the Stone Age is generally defined as the Pleistocene period, 0:10:17.480 --> 0:10:21.600 which is ten thousand years and earlier. At this point 0:10:21.679 --> 0:10:25.360 in Europe, they were pretty confident, right, they had start 0:10:25.400 --> 0:10:30.120 to uncover Neanderthal remains. A Dutch pale anthropologist named Eugene 0:10:30.160 --> 0:10:35.880 Dubois had uncovered Homorectus in Southeast Asia. You know, America 0:10:36.200 --> 0:10:40.160 wanted to have as old in antiquity as Europe. There's 0:10:40.240 --> 0:10:43.319 kind of some competition there, and so there's this huge 0:10:43.320 --> 0:10:47.400 debate and Dave Meltzer's book The Great Paleothic War, it's 0:10:47.640 --> 0:10:51.600 several hundred pages going into that debate, and it's pretty entertaining. 0:10:51.640 --> 0:10:54.440 It's just like just gossip and pretty good. 0:10:54.520 --> 0:10:57.319 I want to stop you right there. Why were people 0:10:57.400 --> 0:11:00.920 so worked up about that, Like, why would we want 0:11:00.960 --> 0:11:03.480 to have as deep a history as Europe? I mean, 0:11:03.559 --> 0:11:06.400 is it literally just like we just want to think 0:11:06.400 --> 0:11:08.040 we're as old as them? Or is there some something 0:11:08.040 --> 0:11:11.560 I don't understand, some economic benefit or some cultural benefit. 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:15.240 No, no benefit other than ego. I mean, we're American, 0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:16.920 so we got to be first, and we got to 0:11:16.920 --> 0:11:17.600 have the oldest. 0:11:17.960 --> 0:11:33.480 Like I've been holding out on you, I didn't just 0:11:33.520 --> 0:11:36.760 go to Ohio to Meton's lab, but I also went 0:11:36.960 --> 0:11:43.200 to Dallas, Texas to the campus of SMU. Doctor David 0:11:43.240 --> 0:11:47.560 Meltzer is an og archaeologist and author, and he's going 0:11:47.600 --> 0:11:50.800 to give us a granular walkthrough of the deep story 0:11:50.880 --> 0:11:55.040 of America. But first we've got to talk about Foalsome, 0:11:55.120 --> 0:11:55.800 New Mexico. 0:11:56.920 --> 0:11:59.720 So when we were last talking, Clay, you remember we 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:02.439 were in Fulsom New Mexico. And Fulsom New Mexico was 0:12:02.520 --> 0:12:06.040 a turning point in the story of the peopling of 0:12:06.080 --> 0:12:09.640 the Americas, because up to that moment in time, nobody 0:12:09.720 --> 0:12:13.040 was really confident that we had any evidence whatsoever that 0:12:13.080 --> 0:12:17.880 people had been and arrived in the Americas in Ice 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:23.480 age times. Fulsom broke that barrier after literally fifty years 0:12:23.520 --> 0:12:27.280 of controversy, Fulsom came along and we had clear cut 0:12:27.320 --> 0:12:33.280 evidence for the first time of human artifacts, genuine human artifacts. 0:12:33.320 --> 0:12:36.880 There was no question about these in direct association with 0:12:36.920 --> 0:12:40.280 what we're known to be now extinct Ice age bison. 0:12:42.240 --> 0:12:44.800 I have no doubt that you remember Bargrea's Hall of 0:12:44.800 --> 0:12:48.200 Famer George mcjunkin, who discovered the Falsome site in nineteen 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:52.160 oh eight. It's here where they found the first falsome points, 0:12:52.559 --> 0:12:57.280 which were beautifully crafted, lanceolate shaped, thin sharp stone points 0:12:57.640 --> 0:13:01.400 that are fluted on both sides. Fluting means that with 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:05.280 a single strike they flaked off the entire side of 0:13:05.320 --> 0:13:08.240 a point. They do this on both sides to create 0:13:08.320 --> 0:13:12.560 a mysteriously thin point. Might be best to like google 0:13:12.600 --> 0:13:14.560 it if you want to envision what it looks like. 0:13:14.800 --> 0:13:17.280 We did a whole series on Fulsome starting with episode 0:13:17.280 --> 0:13:19.800 twenty eight to Bear Grease, and we have a meat 0:13:19.840 --> 0:13:22.440 eater film on YouTube where I killed a bear with 0:13:22.480 --> 0:13:28.640 a falsome point. But after the Fulsome discovery, a new, unidentified, 0:13:28.880 --> 0:13:32.440 slightly different type of fluted points started showing up all 0:13:32.480 --> 0:13:36.760 over the country. These newly found points had smaller flutes 0:13:36.800 --> 0:13:40.640 than falsome, but they were using the same napping technology. 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:44.920 It was kind of like a grandson making a variation 0:13:45.320 --> 0:13:47.240 of his grandfather's design. 0:13:49.480 --> 0:13:52.160 Well, in the wake of fulsome and those very distinctive 0:13:52.160 --> 0:13:56.240 fluted points that we've talked about before, suddenly everybody realized 0:13:56.360 --> 0:13:59.000 these things are all over the continent, and you know, 0:13:59.040 --> 0:14:02.120 you can go to Ohio, you can go to Florida, 0:14:02.160 --> 0:14:04.720 you can go to the state of Washington, and they've 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:07.920 all got these very distinctive fluid points. Except they didn't 0:14:07.920 --> 0:14:11.800 actually quite look like fulsome, and so there was a 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:15.800 little bit of confusion. You know, they used terms like 0:14:16.280 --> 0:14:19.440 generalized fulsome because they didn't quite it didn't quite fit 0:14:19.480 --> 0:14:22.520 the type right. Well, what happens after that is, you know, 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:25.400 suddenly everybody's looking for these sites. Everybody wants to dig 0:14:25.480 --> 0:14:29.240 up these sites. About half a dozen years later, fella 0:14:29.280 --> 0:14:32.160 by name of Edgar B. Howard, who was at the 0:14:33.040 --> 0:14:36.560 Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, have been working on 0:14:36.600 --> 0:14:41.560 these old sites and he'd gotten wind about a locality 0:14:41.720 --> 0:14:46.880 outside of Clovis, New Mexico, and he'd been told he'd 0:14:46.880 --> 0:14:51.560 gotten word that in these dunes along the term is 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:56.720 blackwater draw that these dunes along Blackwater Draw were producing 0:14:57.040 --> 0:14:58.160 large animal bones. 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:03.880 TD. B. Howard was a real deal Indiana Jones type, 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:07.080 and he was headed to check out these bones near 0:15:07.200 --> 0:15:13.400 Clovis and Blackwater Draw. And this guy was a he 0:15:13.760 --> 0:15:16.320 hadn't been an archaeologist's whole career. He was like an 0:15:16.640 --> 0:15:20.040 adult onset archaeologist. Yeah, he was like, there's. 0:15:19.920 --> 0:15:24.200 Forties or oh yeah. So he had heard that megafonnel 0:15:24.240 --> 0:15:28.560 remains had been kind of uncovered in this gravel quarry 0:15:28.840 --> 0:15:31.960 that was being excavated. So it's thought that the Clovis 0:15:32.040 --> 0:15:35.240 site is a spring and there would have been lots 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:38.320 of water resources around kind of been like a watering hole. 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:41.560 So all sorts of animals would have been coming to 0:15:41.640 --> 0:15:45.200 that spot. And you know, sometimes that would make a 0:15:45.240 --> 0:15:48.160 really good hunting locale, right, do you take advantage of 0:15:48.200 --> 0:15:51.480 these animals because they need water? But sometimes they would 0:15:51.480 --> 0:15:54.520 also die just naturally through natural causes at that spot. 0:15:55.280 --> 0:15:58.720 And when he went and started to explore and he 0:15:58.800 --> 0:16:02.800 got teams looking around, they start to find these points 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:07.560 that were larger than Falsom points. At the time, they 0:16:07.560 --> 0:16:11.840 thought they were cruder. And the flutes, you know, those 0:16:11.880 --> 0:16:16.040 grooves that extend from the base upwards rather than Falseom, 0:16:16.080 --> 0:16:19.160 where they go the whole way. These flutes would only 0:16:19.160 --> 0:16:21.560 go a third of the way up the spearhead right, 0:16:21.840 --> 0:16:24.920 sometimes half, sometimes a little bit less. And what's amazing 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:29.560 about Blackwater draw this site is they were finding Clovis 0:16:29.640 --> 0:16:34.200 points underneath Falsome points. And so this was the first 0:16:34.240 --> 0:16:37.640 time where they actually had really concrete evidence based on 0:16:37.680 --> 0:16:41.760 the law of superposition that, wow, Falsom isn't the oldest. 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:45.280 There are older cultures and Falsome because when we dig deeper, 0:16:45.400 --> 0:16:48.000 we're finding different artifacts. And that's what the law of 0:16:48.080 --> 0:16:52.360 superposition is. It's just basically generally the deeper you go, 0:16:53.000 --> 0:16:54.520 the older things get. 0:16:55.320 --> 0:16:58.840 It wasn't just these unusual points that made the Clovis 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:02.040 site different. There were other types of bones here that 0:17:02.160 --> 0:17:05.840 really put Clovis on the map. This place would become 0:17:05.960 --> 0:17:09.480 known as the Clovis type site, which is a term 0:17:09.680 --> 0:17:14.000 used to describe the original place that something important is found. 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:17.520 Did you hear him say that this famous place, this 0:17:17.840 --> 0:17:20.199 Clovis site as it would be come known, was a 0:17:20.200 --> 0:17:24.920 commercial gravel pit. Talk about two different types of folks 0:17:24.960 --> 0:17:31.280 interested in digging gravel miners and archaeologists. These guys are 0:17:31.320 --> 0:17:34.400 on like completely different spectrums. Oh, no question, I mean 0:17:34.480 --> 0:17:37.320 like as far apart as you could possibly be. 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:40.159 And you know what, the situation, it's actually kind of 0:17:40.160 --> 0:17:43.440 sad because it gets worse in the nineteen fifties. They 0:17:43.440 --> 0:17:46.400 bring in these giant road graders and trackos and everything, 0:17:46.480 --> 0:17:50.399 and there's photos that you can see of bulldozers in 0:17:50.440 --> 0:17:52.640 the background and a bunch of folks in the foreground 0:17:52.680 --> 0:17:55.040 frantically excavating bones. 0:17:55.119 --> 0:17:59.600 Wow, I'm just looking now at one of the books 0:17:59.600 --> 0:18:03.240 on clothes and it says the New Mexico Highway Department, 0:18:03.520 --> 0:18:07.800 prospecting for gravel to use in local road improvements, struck 0:18:07.800 --> 0:18:11.360 a deposit on the Anderson Carter ranch, not far from 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:15.600 where Whitman and Anderson had made their discoveries. To other archaeologists, 0:18:16.320 --> 0:18:20.440 mammoth bones were dislodged and pulled up by heavy construction machinery. 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:23.920 Soon thereafter, some of the fossils were placed on display 0:18:24.040 --> 0:18:27.960 in nearby portales. Other bones were carted away by workers 0:18:28.000 --> 0:18:32.080 and curious onlookers. Some people were taking stuff away only 0:18:32.160 --> 0:18:35.640 to show up later on porches, in cupboards, and in garages. 0:18:36.400 --> 0:18:38.800 One local farmer who made off with a hefty chunk 0:18:38.800 --> 0:18:42.520 of mammoth bone eventually used it as a doorstop. Luckily, 0:18:42.800 --> 0:18:46.400 eb Howard caught word of these happenings and rushed back 0:18:46.440 --> 0:18:47.159 to Clovis. 0:18:50.600 --> 0:18:53.439 But what they discovered, and this is what eb Howard 0:18:53.480 --> 0:18:57.719 realized in November of nineteen thirty two, was we've got 0:18:58.320 --> 0:19:02.200 another instance kind of like full except it's not just bison. 0:19:02.560 --> 0:19:06.960 There's also mammoth at this site. And so he excavates 0:19:07.000 --> 0:19:11.119 there in the early nineteen thirties over a series of 0:19:11.119 --> 0:19:16.240 about half a dozen years, and they recover in association 0:19:17.359 --> 0:19:21.679 Fulsome points with bison and what will come to be 0:19:21.760 --> 0:19:24.400 called Clovis Points with mammoth. 0:19:25.119 --> 0:19:29.440 And that's really important because the Fulsome site was with 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:33.840 these bison antiquis, correct, which were an extinct species of bison. 0:19:34.200 --> 0:19:37.800 But still there was some question amongst the people that 0:19:37.880 --> 0:19:42.679 but like, well, maybe they weren't really bison antiquis, maybe 0:19:42.720 --> 0:19:46.080 it was something different. But mammoth we knew for sure. 0:19:46.520 --> 0:19:49.680 That's an excellent point, because you know, bison, we're still 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:53.119 wandering around, right And it was really a question of 0:19:53.200 --> 0:19:57.400 are these truly ancient bison or not? And people were 0:19:57.600 --> 0:20:00.840 reasonably confident in that. But when you've got projectile point 0:20:00.880 --> 0:20:04.359 associated with a mammoth, there's no ambiguity. Yeah, mammoths are 0:20:04.440 --> 0:20:07.119 not wandering around the American high planes. 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:10.560 And they're still trying to answer this question of were 0:20:10.640 --> 0:20:15.240 their humans here during the Pleistocene. Do you remember where 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:18.600 you were in November nineteen thirty two when they discovered 0:20:18.640 --> 0:20:23.320 mammoth bones in association with Clovis points. Well, most of 0:20:23.359 --> 0:20:26.840 us weren't alive, but you get the point. Pun intended 0:20:27.200 --> 0:20:30.040 that this was monumental and to bring us all up 0:20:30.080 --> 0:20:35.120 to speed. The Fulsome site dates back between ten thousand, 0:20:35.200 --> 0:20:39.040 two hundred years and ten thousand, seven hundred years ago, 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:43.160 but that site was found first, so it's a little confusing. 0:20:43.440 --> 0:20:45.800 But it was younger than the Clovis site, which was 0:20:45.840 --> 0:20:49.840 found in nineteen thirty two. And the Clovis period is 0:20:49.920 --> 0:20:55.240 basically the prior one thousand years, dating it back to 0:20:55.920 --> 0:20:59.760 just under twelve thousand years old. But we need to 0:20:59.760 --> 0:21:04.080 know it exactly what it means when we say Clovist technology. 0:21:05.280 --> 0:21:11.480 So Clovist technology is comprised of stone and bone artifacts. Now, 0:21:11.680 --> 0:21:15.400 the iconic Clovist artifact is what we call the Clovis 0:21:15.480 --> 0:21:18.440 fluted point right, and so this is a spear point 0:21:18.760 --> 0:21:21.439 that could have been used as a projectile for like 0:21:21.480 --> 0:21:24.040 the Atlatl dart. It could have been used as a 0:21:24.080 --> 0:21:27.400 spearhead for thrusting spears. It could have been used as 0:21:27.640 --> 0:21:29.320 a knife in knife handles. 0:21:29.359 --> 0:21:32.080 Right, it would not have been used in archery because 0:21:32.160 --> 0:21:37.000 it was way older than archery. Really, maybe you tell. 0:21:36.840 --> 0:21:39.000 Me, Well, so this is the thing. People assume that 0:21:39.040 --> 0:21:42.240 the bow and arrow occurs very late in North America, 0:21:42.359 --> 0:21:46.280 but I don't know. I mean, we get evidence of 0:21:46.359 --> 0:21:49.640 the bow and arrow in South Africa. I want to say, 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:53.680 something like seventy thousand years ago. Wow, So it's very 0:21:53.720 --> 0:21:58.280 possible that, you know, because technologies are like biological species, 0:21:58.680 --> 0:22:01.360 they can emerge, they can also go extinct. So it's 0:22:01.400 --> 0:22:04.879 possible that at some point, as people are moving across 0:22:05.320 --> 0:22:08.679 Asia and Siberia, they lose bow and arrow technology and 0:22:08.720 --> 0:22:10.719 then when they come to the New World they have 0:22:10.760 --> 0:22:11.560 to reinvent it. 0:22:11.680 --> 0:22:14.600 So a close point, it's within the realm of possibility 0:22:14.640 --> 0:22:15.439 that could have been. 0:22:15.720 --> 0:22:16.800 Could have been used with a bone. 0:22:16.840 --> 0:22:19.000 I can't wait for Steve Ornelle to hear this. 0:22:19.560 --> 0:22:24.800 Is it's now. I'm not saying they did. So it 0:22:24.920 --> 0:22:28.520 is possible. We don't know, I mean, and to be honest, 0:22:28.520 --> 0:22:30.520 we also don't know that they use the at laddle. 0:22:30.880 --> 0:22:34.399 We don't. We've never found a Clovis at laddle. We've 0:22:34.400 --> 0:22:35.760 never found a Clovis spear. 0:22:35.920 --> 0:22:39.600 That's preservation bias potentially, that's yeah, So like an at 0:22:39.760 --> 0:22:45.800 laddle thrower would have been made of organic matter, would bone. Yeah, 0:22:45.920 --> 0:22:47.840 I'm not saying that Clovis folks use the bone arrow, 0:22:47.920 --> 0:22:50.320 But what I'm saying is we can't say that they 0:22:50.359 --> 0:22:51.960 didn't use the more. Yeah. 0:22:52.400 --> 0:22:55.840 But so this gets to that really pesky answer. I 0:22:55.880 --> 0:22:56.240 don't know. 0:22:59.640 --> 0:23:04.119 Oh, strings and aerow shafts are also organic matter. And 0:23:04.160 --> 0:23:07.400 a man whose name rhyme's with Cleves Stinella, once chotted 0:23:07.440 --> 0:23:10.080 me for shooting a Paleo point out of my bow, 0:23:10.440 --> 0:23:14.440 saying it wasn't historically accurate. But that's water under the bridge. 0:23:14.640 --> 0:23:19.840 Let's get back to these presumed emphasis on presumed Clovis 0:23:19.960 --> 0:23:20.800 mammoth hunters. 0:23:22.600 --> 0:23:25.080 Now, the other thing to keep in mind is, do 0:23:25.119 --> 0:23:28.280 you know how many sites on the entire continent of 0:23:28.280 --> 0:23:33.040 North America we have with Clovis points in association. 0:23:32.480 --> 0:23:33.480 With mammoth thirteen? 0:23:33.960 --> 0:23:40.200 Fifteen, fifteen, you're close, yeah, fifteen. So let's say hypothetically. 0:23:39.520 --> 0:23:41.359 That sounds like a lot to me, but it's probably 0:23:41.359 --> 0:23:41.679 really not. 0:23:42.080 --> 0:23:46.439 Well, fifteen on the entire continent of North America, right, 0:23:46.640 --> 0:23:47.960 fifteen is not a large nub. 0:23:48.040 --> 0:23:50.960 Do we not have Clovis points lodged in mammoth. 0:23:50.760 --> 0:23:53.119 Well, that it's funny. That was exactly what's going to 0:23:53.119 --> 0:23:57.680 bring up next. We've never found Clovis tips, Clovis point 0:23:57.920 --> 0:24:02.320 stone lodged in mammoth bones. Now that's really interesting to 0:24:02.359 --> 0:24:07.080 think about because in Europe we find stone points, bone 0:24:07.119 --> 0:24:12.160 points lodged in animals going back hundreds of thousands of years, right, 0:24:12.800 --> 0:24:15.800 hundreds of thousands of years. So the question is why, 0:24:15.920 --> 0:24:18.840 why in Europe during the Stone Age? I'm jealous, are 0:24:18.840 --> 0:24:23.879 we getting direct evidence of shooting? We get that over 0:24:23.960 --> 0:24:27.399 and over and over again in Europe, not once in 0:24:27.440 --> 0:24:30.879 North America with a mammoth, with a mammoth. Why, I 0:24:30.920 --> 0:24:32.159 don't know we have something like that. 0:24:32.359 --> 0:24:32.720 We don't know. 0:24:32.920 --> 0:24:36.600 We have over ninety Clovis points in association with mammoth. 0:24:37.160 --> 0:24:40.040 Not one stone point is lodged in any of the bones. 0:24:40.040 --> 0:24:43.120 Could it not just be simple statistics that there were 0:24:43.240 --> 0:24:46.080 less people here for a shorter period of time, So 0:24:46.119 --> 0:24:47.280 statistically us. 0:24:47.200 --> 0:24:49.480 Find in that it could be another. 0:24:49.760 --> 0:24:53.359 I mean humans have been there longer, Yeah, most likely. 0:24:53.640 --> 0:24:56.800 But I think the question though, is even at the 0:24:56.840 --> 0:25:00.600 equivalent period, which would be the Magdalenian period in Europe, 0:25:00.680 --> 0:25:02.679 which is a Stone Age culture right before the end 0:25:02.720 --> 0:25:05.879 of the Ice Age, right, you'll get stone points and 0:25:05.920 --> 0:25:08.800 stuff embedded in bone. Then, so why not at the 0:25:08.800 --> 0:25:12.520