Speaker 1: You're listening to the Sportsman's Nation podcast network, brought to
Speaker 1: you by Lacrosse Boots. Now Lacrosse is at it again
Speaker 1: with a new line of lace up hunting boots, the
Speaker 1: Navigator series. And in that Navigator series there are two models.
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Speaker 1: name is Clay Nucom and I'm the host of the
Speaker 1: Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your host into
Speaker 1: the world of hunting the icon of North American wilderness. There,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about tactics, gear, conservation, but will also bring
Speaker 1: you into some of the wildest country on the planet.
Speaker 1: Chasing better something that's been in the ground for thousands
Speaker 1: of years? How did it get there? Was it dropped?
Speaker 1: Was it shot at something? And and and it's buried
Speaker 1: and you come along and pick it up, and all
Speaker 1: you can do is wonder how these people live? Everyone
Speaker 1: I've picked up and you're I guess this is what
Speaker 1: a lot of people think. But you learned how was
Speaker 1: it lost? Was it shot at a deer? Was it
Speaker 1: shot at a bear? Was it just discarded because it
Speaker 1: was not usable anymore. Was it lost? Did someone give
Speaker 1: it to his son and his irresponsible son lost it?
Speaker 1: But that boy, right, there's lost a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: of mine. If you are a hunter, there's probably deep
Speaker 1: inside of you somewhere some real curiosity and a desire
Speaker 1: to know more about Native Americans, how they use this land,
Speaker 1: and how they hunted. On this podcast, we're gonna jump
Speaker 1: start you by fifteen years in your knowledge of Native
Speaker 1: of American stone projectile points number one, number two, who
Speaker 1: came here first in North America, where they came from?
Speaker 1: And all the different ideas of where these people came from,
Speaker 1: and and understanding of the different time periods in which
Speaker 1: humans have been here in North America. And the reason
Speaker 1: I say fifteen year jump start is because fifteen years
Speaker 1: I've been highly interested in Native American stone projectile points
Speaker 1: as we began to find points on our property in
Speaker 1: different places, and I've just gathered information from different sources
Speaker 1: different places. I never really could find like a dummies
Speaker 1: guide to stone projectile points in Native American history of
Speaker 1: North America, and so I wanted to sit down with
Speaker 1: an expert. And that's just what we're gonna do on
Speaker 1: this podcast when we sit down with Dr Adam Gray
Speaker 1: and he talks about but we just have a fascinating
Speaker 1: conversation for about an hour and fifteen minutes that really,
Speaker 1: if you listen to this, you will have a ton
Speaker 1: of valuable information that's going to that's gonna project you
Speaker 1: into more study or if you just learn some of
Speaker 1: this stuff, you're just gonna be fascinated. So incredible conversation,
Speaker 1: you're gonna enjoy this podcast. I want to draw your
Speaker 1: attention as well as we come into the fall season
Speaker 1: here and we're baiting bears and different parts of the country.
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Speaker 1: this fall and we're pounding away right now on the
Speaker 1: September October issue of Bear Hunting Magazine. This issue will
Speaker 1: be in the hands of our subscribers before September one,
Speaker 1: and it's a very good issue, a lot of good
Speaker 1: how to stuff, a lot of a lot of great content.
Speaker 1: We've got an article about Eddvance, who was on the
Speaker 1: last podcast. We've got some scouting tips for fall bear hunting.
Speaker 1: We've got five creative ways to kill a bear in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen the fall. We've got this story about my
Speaker 1: five and fifty pound Oklahoma black bear from last year.
Speaker 1: So if you're not a subscriber to Bear Hunting Magazine,
Speaker 1: check it out at bear dash Hunting dot com, Bear
Speaker 1: hyphen Hunting dot com. We are in Melbourne, Arkansas. This
Speaker 1: is my first time to Melbourne, Arkansas. Well, welcome. We're
Speaker 1: in Melbourne, Arkansas, and uh I am in the home
Speaker 1: of Dr Adam Gray. You're you're a medical doctor, Adam.
Speaker 1: That's correct. I've just been calling you Adam. That's that's
Speaker 1: all right. Please call me Adam. So where you you
Speaker 1: work out of Melbourne? Is there a hospital in Melbourne?
Speaker 1: There's not a hospital here, but I have a family
Speaker 1: practice clinic here where at least space from Baxter Reason
Speaker 1: Medical Center in Mountain Home and I have a family
Speaker 1: practice clinic there with two nurse practitioners and also working
Speaker 1: in an emergency room in Salem, Arkansas, and I also
Speaker 1: attend to patients in five nursing comes around little jack
Speaker 1: of jack of trades, you know, yeah, master of none.
Speaker 1: Why I'm here is uh is you are? You? Were?
Speaker 1: You were referred to me by a guy that I
Speaker 1: kind of follow. That's beg into digging era heads for
Speaker 1: the layman's terms, but stone projectile points Native American artifacts.
Speaker 1: That's what you've devoted as I understand the last fifteen years,
Speaker 1: you've you've become a collector. You're a you you find
Speaker 1: our heads. You you know the you're you're a regional expert.
Speaker 1: I would say, thank you. Um, I try to be
Speaker 1: you know a lot more than me. Let me put
Speaker 1: it out well, it's something that I've devoted a lot
Speaker 1: of time too. And physicians are weird people. They don't
Speaker 1: get into anything just a little bit there. There all
Speaker 1: are none you know. Um. But but since I found
Speaker 1: my very first area head with my son's mother about
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago, it's become a hobby and a lot
Speaker 1: of people would say an addiction. You know, there there
Speaker 1: are people that that do this a lot, and and
Speaker 1: it it takes up the large percentage of their time,
Speaker 1: but it's it's a lot of fun. And it's great
Speaker 1: fun for me and for my family. And I read
Speaker 1: a lot of archaeology journals and learn about what we're finding,
Speaker 1: and you can go back and learn about how these
Speaker 1: people were living, you know, back in thousands and thousands
Speaker 1: of years ago. Well, I'll start by telling you a
Speaker 1: little bit of why I'm so interested in this and
Speaker 1: and and I've already shared it with you a little bit.
Speaker 1: But several years ago, we got mules. Were own seven
Speaker 1: acres Washington County, Arkansas. There's a creek that borders the
Speaker 1: front side of our property and a small tributary creek
Speaker 1: that borders the western side. We started getting these mules,
Speaker 1: and the mules made trails. They had spots where they
Speaker 1: were rubbing, you know that where they were dusting, where
Speaker 1: they ate the grass down, and where runoff started to create,
Speaker 1: you know, bare spots out in this field, which is
Speaker 1: bad for pasture health and soil health. But we started
Speaker 1: bumping into these stone points in our front yard. And
Speaker 1: and I'll tell you what I tell the kids every
Speaker 1: time we pick one up is and it's so unique
Speaker 1: when it happens on your own place, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: we're gonna get into a lot more than just that.
Speaker 1: But you know, when I picked up that air head,
Speaker 1: that first one, I told the kids, I said, the
Speaker 1: last human that touched this before me was planning to
Speaker 1: cook his meal over an open fire with a critter
Speaker 1: that he killed with this stone. Yes, And I have
Speaker 1: said that exact thing to my kids on numerous occasions.
Speaker 1: Something that's been in the ground for thousands of years,
Speaker 1: How did he get there? Was it dropped? Was it
Speaker 1: shot at something? And and and it's buried and you
Speaker 1: come along and pick it up, and all you can
Speaker 1: do is wonder how these people live? Everyone I've picked
Speaker 1: up and you're probably I guess this is what a
Speaker 1: lot of people think. But you learned. How was it lost?
Speaker 1: Was it shot at a deer? Was it shot at
Speaker 1: a bear? Was it just discarded because it was not
Speaker 1: usable anymore? Was it lost? Did someone give it to
Speaker 1: his son and his irresponsible son lost it? That never
Speaker 1: happened that boy, right, there's lost a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: of mine. Uh now, yeah, that's the mystery of it.
Speaker 1: I think that's the intrigue of finding this ancient stuff
Speaker 1: with people that were really just like us. I mean,
Speaker 1: they were they were humans. They they they had they
Speaker 1: had dream teams, and they cared about their families, and
Speaker 1: they wanted their sons and daughters to prosper, and they
Speaker 1: they they had needs that had to be met. I mean,
Speaker 1: they were humans, but they lived in this lifestyle that
Speaker 1: is so different than us. Right. They were camping three
Speaker 1: sixty five, I mean, you know, and following the food
Speaker 1: and food and water and shelter. Those are the three
Speaker 1: things they had to have. Yeah, And and so they
Speaker 1: developed over time these technologies that that would allow them
Speaker 1: to procure what they needed in order to to reproduce,
Speaker 1: to survive, and eventually to thrive and become you know,
Speaker 1: the Mississippian period Native Americans that we all think of
Speaker 1: when we hear the word Indian, right right, right, Well, okay,
Speaker 1: this conversation is going to be difficult because you know
Speaker 1: so much and have so many questions, and we're sitting
Speaker 1: here in your your office, your library, and you have
Speaker 1: this amazing collection of stone points from all over well
Speaker 1: and most of them would be from the South, if
Speaker 1: I guess, But some of them would be from other places. Sure,
Speaker 1: I collect points from from mainly from what we call
Speaker 1: the Central States, which would be from Nebraska to West
Speaker 1: Virginia and Michigan down to Louisiana that area. Yeah, all
Speaker 1: all the points in this area are somewhat related to
Speaker 1: each other through time and in different space. We call
Speaker 1: it spatially. You know, they overlapped areas and UH as
Speaker 1: these point types evolved over thirteen thousand, five hundred years,
Speaker 1: you can see uh similarities between different types of points
Speaker 1: and you can see the evolution process and that gives
Speaker 1: you clues into what the climate was like, and what
Speaker 1: they were hunting and UH and and what they were
Speaker 1: using these points for because not all of these points
Speaker 1: were shot at things. Some of them would have been knives,
Speaker 1: some of them may have been a true spirit point,
Speaker 1: some may have been a true arrow point, some may
Speaker 1: have been a tip to in that Lattle Dart. So, well,
Speaker 1: there's several things I want to talk about. The first thing,
Speaker 1: and and we're approached, and this from the standpoint of
Speaker 1: like we're talking to people that don't know anything about
Speaker 1: well about these people. And so my my first question
Speaker 1: or what I want to talk about first is where
Speaker 1: did these people come from? Boy, that's that's the sixty
Speaker 1: four dollar question right there, and and and there is
Speaker 1: there has been a theory that's been around for a
Speaker 1: long time, and it's called the Clovis first theory. And that's, uh,
Speaker 1: that's the null void point right now that we're trying
Speaker 1: to figure out is that the case or not. But
Speaker 1: that theory says, basically that it's believed that the first
Speaker 1: Americans came across a Siberian land bridge over into Alaska,
Speaker 1: through an ice free corridor through Alaska and Canada and
Speaker 1: populated North America and then spread out into Central and
Speaker 1: South America from there. Um. That theory that's been widely
Speaker 1: accepted for a long time, a long time, a long time.
Speaker 1: But there are some problems with that theory. And and
Speaker 1: one of those theories is that one of the problems
Speaker 1: with that theory is that that when they radiocarbon date um,
Speaker 1: you can't radiocarbon data point, but you can radiocarbon date
Speaker 1: something that's sitting next to it, like a like a
Speaker 1: burnt acorn shell or hickory shell, because something that's got
Speaker 1: carbon in it. When they get these associated dates for
Speaker 1: Clovis points. They date older in the southeastern United States
Speaker 1: and they do anywhere near Alaska or the northwestern United States,
Speaker 1: and so that doesn't make sense. It doesn't want to
Speaker 1: even stop you right there. So the Baring land Bridge
Speaker 1: would have been an ice free zone because of glaciers
Speaker 1: and a much colder climate, so the oceans were lower.
Speaker 1: They were because much of the Earth's water was capped
Speaker 1: into these glaciers. And so basically from Alaska to the
Speaker 1: camp Chatka Peninsula of Russia would have been this thousand
Speaker 1: mile wide land bridge. I recently heard a podcast from
Speaker 1: a guy, uh Steve Ronnella, so some of the something
Speaker 1: is just fresh on my mind. But they talked about
Speaker 1: how and certainly people did cross that land bridge. They did,
Speaker 1: so it's not we're not debating whether they crossed. What
Speaker 1: you're going to talk about in a minute is the
Speaker 1: theory of where they the first, because that's been the
Speaker 1: that's been the main thing is were they the first people?
Speaker 1: And so the that theory would have been that people
Speaker 1: crossed over from Asia and they came in and from
Speaker 1: Alaska basically populated North and South America. The Clovis site
Speaker 1: is in New Mexico. And so what you're saying is
Speaker 1: is that the oldest site that we know of from
Speaker 1: radio carbon dating, finding these points, finding this mammoth skeleton
Speaker 1: skeleton would have been older than anything north of it.
Speaker 1: So if they would have been the first, there should
Speaker 1: have been older sites. They're correct, and that's not what
Speaker 1: they're finding, and so that doesn't support that theory. And
Speaker 1: so there are some other theories that are being put
Speaker 1: forth right now, and and some some have a lot
Speaker 1: of support and some have a few. One of those
Speaker 1: theories is that, Okay, let's let's go back and talk
Speaker 1: about the Clovis Point for just a minute. Clovis points
Speaker 1: are what we call fluted. The base of the point
Speaker 1: has been thinned with something called direct percussion, where they
Speaker 1: hit the rock directly and knocked flakes off of it
Speaker 1: and thinned it. Um That technology does not exist anywhere
Speaker 1: else on planet Earth. It is, and it is it
Speaker 1: is only in North America, and it's widely regarded as
Speaker 1: being the first invention in the New World because it's
Speaker 1: not found anywhere else. But it's unlikely that someone stepped
Speaker 1: across the burying land bridge and knocked out of Clovis
Speaker 1: Point and went from there. They were using some kind
Speaker 1: of tools before that technology was developed. So a lot
Speaker 1: of people now believe that the Clovis technology started somewhere
Speaker 1: in the southeastern United States and the technology spread much
Speaker 1: more rapidly than the people spread. But it spread probably
Speaker 1: northward and westward into a population that already existed. And
Speaker 1: and so if if you believe that, then you still
Speaker 1: have to ask the question what kind of tools were
Speaker 1: they using before that? Where did they come from? Okay,
Speaker 1: so if that, if what you just said is what happened,
Speaker 1: then does that tell me Explain to me how that
Speaker 1: could nullify that the that they weren't the first people.
Speaker 1: The first people didn't come from the land bridge, right.
Speaker 1: First of all, we we do have a lot of
Speaker 1: information that we know that that Native American populations in
Speaker 1: the United States and in Central America share certain genetic
Speaker 1: haplotypes with people from Siberia. So we do know that
Speaker 1: the d n A came from Siberia, at least some
Speaker 1: of it. You know, there's no way to prove all
Speaker 1: of it didn't, But so we do know they came
Speaker 1: that from there. But but the the every all of
Speaker 1: them did, that's a good question. We really don't know.
Speaker 1: There's some some theories that say that there may be
Speaker 1: some European d n A in groups um up in
Speaker 1: the northeastern United States that share a lot of their
Speaker 1: language patterns with Norwegian languages and the and and that
Speaker 1: there were blue eyed Native Americans up in that part
Speaker 1: of the country also, and so some people that would
Speaker 1: have crossed over maybe a similar type of passage, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe from Norway through green Land and Iceland that area,
Speaker 1: maybe skimming along the the oh when when there was
Speaker 1: when the oceans were lower and there would be could
Speaker 1: be right, So that's that's another theory. And and there's
Speaker 1: also a theory that the cloths technology came from a
Speaker 1: previous technology that that that existed in France called a
Speaker 1: salutary in technology. There are a lot of similarities between
Speaker 1: the two technologies. Uh Solutrians didn't flute their points, but
Speaker 1: but other than that, the technologies and the toolkits that
Speaker 1: they used were very similar. Um. So there's could it
Speaker 1: could it not be possible that two people would come
Speaker 1: up with the same thing though independently there's that highly
Speaker 1: unlike it's highly unlikely because if it were to happen,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't happen in the same continent. It would have
Speaker 1: happened around the world, like so many other different technologies
Speaker 1: have evolved. Okay, I see what's so you're saying, because
Speaker 1: it happened one place here and something very similar happened
Speaker 1: one place here, that they're connected. If it had happened
Speaker 1: ten places, maybe this is like it would make more sense.
Speaker 1: This is just the way that kind of if you
Speaker 1: have a rock and you want to kill something and
Speaker 1: start knocking around on it, you get that point, right right,
Speaker 1: convergent evolution. I think that I think the biologists would
Speaker 1: call that so rather than divergent evolution. But there are
Speaker 1: many many technologies around the world that have evolved separate
Speaker 1: from one another but ended up being the same thing,
Speaker 1: you know. But but I don't think the flutid point
Speaker 1: technology is one of those at all. So we're looking
Speaker 1: at we're looking at a fluted point type that that
Speaker 1: was invented in North America and found nowhere else in
Speaker 1: the world. First American invention, right, very first. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's an interesting way to look at that. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are also some theories that that maybe um, some
Speaker 1: Polynesians or other groups populated the western hemisphere from South America,
Speaker 1: the very southern part of South America, where there are
Speaker 1: some very old uh sites down there that dated date
Speaker 1: much older than anything in North America. Uh. There's another
Speaker 1: point type in South and Central America called the hel
Speaker 1: Hobo Point, and there are some people who are theorizing
Speaker 1: now that that point type traveled north from there and
Speaker 1: then became a fluted point called a Cumberland point, and
Speaker 1: that Cumberland points evolved into Clovis points. Now that's a
Speaker 1: sticky that's a sticky subject with a lot of people,
Speaker 1: because everybody's got their opinion on this. But the problem
Speaker 1: with it is Cumberland points haven't been well dated anywhere yet. Well,
Speaker 1: so are you saying that the oldest sites that we
Speaker 1: know between North and South America are in South America? Okay?
Speaker 1: So for that with that, when did that knowledge come forth?
Speaker 1: It's been in the last fifteen or twenty years relatively, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess for And I've talked to several
Speaker 1: vocational archaeologists about that, and and some of them just
Speaker 1: blow it off and say, no, there's problems with the data.
Speaker 1: The dates aren't good, things like this. But there's a
Speaker 1: whole another camp. And that's how science works. You have
Speaker 1: to put forth something and then you discuss it and
Speaker 1: they come to a consensus about it. Twenty years later
Speaker 1: they decide if it was writer right. So but but inside,
Speaker 1: I mean it is plausible. I guess that inside of
Speaker 1: the burying land bridge theory, what would you what would
Speaker 1: you call that? Just some clothes first, and the first
Speaker 1: kind of encompasses that. So with the clothes first theology,
Speaker 1: it's it would just be happenstance that just the oldest
Speaker 1: site we found was in South America. Like so there's
Speaker 1: older ones, we just hadn't found them. This just happens
Speaker 1: to be the one we found way down there. And
Speaker 1: and there are some there are some sites in North
Speaker 1: America that that have been radiocarbon dated human occupation older
Speaker 1: than any any known low the states that we have
Speaker 1: in North America, um, the Topper site, the met Across
Speaker 1: Rock Shelter site, with some sites that we know there
Speaker 1: were people living there, we just haven't found any tools
Speaker 1: yet or anything that's diagnostic that can tell us these
Speaker 1: people were these people. So then they've got some very
Speaker 1: crude stone tools. I think that's eventually gonna happen. I
Speaker 1: think those sites are extremely rare and we just haven't
Speaker 1: found the right one yet. You know, when you think
Speaker 1: about the amount of land space in the in the
Speaker 1: amount of that space that has actually been excavated by
Speaker 1: people that knew what they were doing, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm just novice, just thinking, but I mean, it's like
Speaker 1: there could be something two ft under the foundation of
Speaker 1: your house that could unlock the whole story and that
Speaker 1: will never know You never know it's there, I mean,
Speaker 1: And so I guess you, I mean, you just have
Speaker 1: to work with what you do know, right, And and
Speaker 1: I'm I would call myself in a vocational archaeologist and
Speaker 1: amateur archaeologists. And you know, I don't do this for
Speaker 1: a living. I do it for fun. I don't excavate
Speaker 1: in a controlled fashion like archaeologists do. But they're archaeologists
Speaker 1: are limited in what they can do. They first of all,
Speaker 1: they're relying on public moneys most of the time, which
Speaker 1: is limited and it's just not a priority in our
Speaker 1: culture unfortunately. But they're also limited by time. They have
Speaker 1: to stand back and and brush dirt off of things
Speaker 1: and find them and record them. And we're we're you know,
Speaker 1: people who like to go out and find their heads.
Speaker 1: You know, they do it at there when they want to,
Speaker 1: when the weather is good, and they do a lot
Speaker 1: of it. And so most of the knowledge that we
Speaker 1: have about point types actually come from people who don't
Speaker 1: do this for a living. Yeah, that's interesting. So the
Speaker 1: best thing that can happen is is for archaeologists and
Speaker 1: and people who hunt these points to come together and
Speaker 1: and find a way to work together to identify a site.
Speaker 1: And I'll give you a good example. Dr Julie morrow
Speaker 1: Over at a s u IS is a friend of
Speaker 1: my and she has spent a significant portion of her
Speaker 1: career and looking for a Clovis site in Arkansas that
Speaker 1: is stratified and can be dated and studied, and it
Speaker 1: just hasn't happened yet. Um, and she's not gonna be
Speaker 1: by Clovis side. That means the technology of that fluted
Speaker 1: point bottom right and and and she's not likely to
Speaker 1: find that unless somebody comes forward somewhere and says, hey,
Speaker 1: we're finding this stuff here, you need to come excavate this.
Speaker 1: And so you know, we've got to figure out a
Speaker 1: way to work together. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. So okay,
Speaker 1: so we've established that. Now, would you say the clothes
Speaker 1: first is still the predominant theory, but there's just some
Speaker 1: other things that kind of don't make sense, don't totally
Speaker 1: make sense, right and and so right now we're still
Speaker 1: going with that theory. Closed first. That's the oldest point
Speaker 1: type that we know of. So that was five years, yes, roughly, yes, so,
Speaker 1: but that's in New Mexico. Right, So the first the
Speaker 1: first people that came over the burying land bridge would
Speaker 1: have been how long ago? Oh, that's a good question. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, there are some sites in North America now
Speaker 1: that that data up to fourteen fifteen thousand years, and
Speaker 1: they probably and that's the buzzword number that I have heard,
Speaker 1: thousand years there have been there's been human occupation North America.
Speaker 1: And you know, they probably didn't didn't get a group
Speaker 1: of ten thousand people in march them across the Berian Lanberge.
Speaker 1: They probably came in waves, you know, ten or twenty
Speaker 1: or thirty here, and you know, and so there was
Speaker 1: kind of constant infusion of these people coming across here seasonally,
Speaker 1: you know, when the weather permitted. They were probably following food,
Speaker 1: which is what most you know, that's what they were doing.
Speaker 1: They were following whatever whenever they could eat and uh,
Speaker 1: and so eventually they just found their way over here
Speaker 1: and then got a little further south. And now you
Speaker 1: said something earlier about the genetics, So talk to me
Speaker 1: a little bit about that. Like, so they've taken because
Speaker 1: there's still intact tribes of Native Americans that are today,
Speaker 1: and so they're able to do genetic testing on these
Speaker 1: people compare those that you and I know nothing of
Speaker 1: this other than just the idea of but with people
Speaker 1: over and from where, from Siberia primarily. Uh, they've done
Speaker 1: some testing on DNA haplotypes from Siberia and Japan and
Speaker 1: even Polynesian countries and compared that uh to d N
Speaker 1: A that that has been voluntarily given by Native Americans. Now,
Speaker 1: an interesting caveat to that is is that a lot
Speaker 1: of the North American Native Americans, UH that we're familiar
Speaker 1: with those tribes, they refuse to give any blood for sampling,
Speaker 1: um and and they have their reasons for that, and
Speaker 1: you have to just respect that. So most of the
Speaker 1: haplotyping that's been done has been done on Central American
Speaker 1: Native Americans. Yeah, so they're having to compare to those.
Speaker 1: But but it's assumed that they're related, you know, and
Speaker 1: most likely they are, you know. So that's that's just
Speaker 1: an interesting little caveat So it's like, so about a
Speaker 1: doubt these people can be connected back October there no doubt,
Speaker 1: no doubt at all, no doubt at all. And then
Speaker 1: and and uh dr Morrow has been involved with with
Speaker 1: a little bit of that. I believe it's the Anasic
Speaker 1: side out in the northwestern United States where where an
Speaker 1: infant was found buried with Clovis tools, Clovis by faces,
Speaker 1: large what they call platter by faces and Clovis points
Speaker 1: and DNA was recovered from that skeleton and compared. And
Speaker 1: so that skeleton has been shown to be related to
Speaker 1: uh Native Americans in the western Hemistinal. Okay, if if it,
Speaker 1: if the Clovis first idea wasn't true, wouldn't there be
Speaker 1: people in South America that were connected to some other
Speaker 1: part of the world, right right? And and I'm not
Speaker 1: getting any of that um in in the literature that
Speaker 1: I'm reading. I get very little coming out of South America.
Speaker 1: You probably would have just something to talk to somebody
Speaker 1: who knew a little bit more about that but yes,
Speaker 1: um so and and it's and and that study, by
Speaker 1: the way, is in its infancy right now. They're they're
Speaker 1: still identifying ways to mark genetics through time. Mitochondrial DNA
Speaker 1: and certain haplotypes um seem to persist through lineages and
Speaker 1: some don't. So they're still finding these markers and it's
Speaker 1: and it's and it's blossoming right now. They're gonna start
Speaker 1: testing people, uh and and find out that there there
Speaker 1: may be some European DNA, there may be some Polynesian DNA.
Speaker 1: We won't know, you know, until you get a large
Speaker 1: number a large sample together. And when they do that,
Speaker 1: you're gonna find some interesting things. I think, yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So we've established that people for sure came across there,
Speaker 1: there's some we don't know exactly where everybody came from, right,
Speaker 1: But then what did they do and how did they
Speaker 1: Because would pretty much every part of North America have
Speaker 1: had some Native American habitation, I mean, I know, in
Speaker 1: in other than places that would have been covered by glaciers.
Speaker 1: These people were obviously explorers and they were not afraid
Speaker 1: of what it was around the next corner. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've been on a good fishing stream, and
Speaker 1: you can't wait to see what's around the next corner.
Speaker 1: But that's the way they were, and they were they
Speaker 1: couldn't wait to see what was what was around the
Speaker 1: next corner, what what could I eat over there? And
Speaker 1: they eventually just spread out across North America, filled every
Speaker 1: corner of it, and then and then they started populating.
Speaker 1: The period that where the Clovis people were here is
Speaker 1: called the Paleolithic period um and and really Native American
Speaker 1: history in the United States can be kind of divided
Speaker 1: into about five different time periods. The Paleo would be
Speaker 1: Clovis points Folsom points a lot about in their thousand
Speaker 1: five years section period of time. There's five sections sections
Speaker 1: of yahi section of development, and they are used to
Speaker 1: describe how they were living. So this Paleo period, there
Speaker 1: were bands of people, probably small bands of people that
Speaker 1: were chasing mega fon big animals that don't exist today.
Speaker 1: And they were they were hunters, that's what they were doing.
Speaker 1: They lived on meat. They may have you know, collected
Speaker 1: some things along the way, you know, but they were
Speaker 1: not planting anything. They were not foraging. They were hunting
Speaker 1: and uh and they were hunting things like bison antiquois,
Speaker 1: which are old bison that were much bigger than the
Speaker 1: bison that we think of today. UM mastodon, mammoth, giant sloth,
Speaker 1: giant beaver, um, short faced bear. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've heard of that one or not. Big big stuff,
Speaker 1: and these people were probably pretty tough. You didn't want
Speaker 1: to come across them. So the Paleold Period, well, just
Speaker 1: for people listen, this is a This is something that
Speaker 1: I have as just a novice at this It is
Speaker 1: something that's marked in my mind. That's helped me is
Speaker 1: I've tried to understand stuff back this big geologic time
Speaker 1: and stuff is the the Pleistocene period ended ten thousand
Speaker 1: years ago. That's about right in the place to scene.
Speaker 1: So so ten thousand years ago is when all those
Speaker 1: big guys died off, When the mammoths died, that's when
Speaker 1: the short faced bears died, that's when the separatetooth cats died,
Speaker 1: that's when the American lion died. Like, but there were
Speaker 1: humans living during that time here. They were here and
Speaker 1: for a long time in American archaeology, they didn't know that.
Speaker 1: They didn't believe that. Um, but then you know, Clovis
Speaker 1: and fulsome sights changed that they found man made points
Speaker 1: mixed in with skeletons from mastodon in Missouri and mammoth
Speaker 1: in New Mexico, and and that was that was big.
Speaker 1: That was huge to to know that mankind men were
Speaker 1: here with these animals at the same time. You know,
Speaker 1: that was a big deal. And that was back in
Speaker 1: the thirties, you know, So we've known that since then,
Speaker 1: and it's just that when the Clovis site was found,
Speaker 1: but that got in Mexico right a long time ago.
Speaker 1: But then there was something else in Missouri. Yes, I'm
Speaker 1: not that there's another side up in Missouri and there's
Speaker 1: a state park just uh this side of St. Louis,
Speaker 1: and I believe it's called the Chemswick Side, if I'm
Speaker 1: not mistaken. Yeah. Yeah, it's a pretty neat place. So
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to interrupt you. And I'm trying to
Speaker 1: just piece all this together. So this is just like
Speaker 1: I'm having a private conversation with you, trying to answer
Speaker 1: my questions. But okay, So there's thirteen thousand, five hundred
Speaker 1: years of occupation, five different time periods. The first one
Speaker 1: was Paleo and during that paleo time period is when
Speaker 1: humans were hunting mastodons and fighting short face bears, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: so start me back from there, all right. So from there,
Speaker 1: um as the as the environment changed, the glaciers were retreating,
Speaker 1: the climate was warming up in these megaphon and were disappearing,
Speaker 1: the archael just caught the economy. The economy change what
Speaker 1: they were doing, uh, and so they had to figure
Speaker 1: out different ways to to survive. And so that's really
Speaker 1: when the white tail deer became a big, big food source, uh,
Speaker 1: for for natives in this And we're there white tailed
Speaker 1: deer back before the most certainly. And there were elk
Speaker 1: in Arkansas there were, yes, they were, yes, they they
Speaker 1: just were one that survived that whatever happened. And so
Speaker 1: there's a big thing of something happened very rapidly, very
Speaker 1: quickly killed off all these critters in in the in
Speaker 1: the vegetation changed, the landscape changed. And I'd be honest
Speaker 1: with you if I had if I had ten guys
Speaker 1: with me and we were going to decide whether or
Speaker 1: not we were gonna go try to kill a mastodon
Speaker 1: or if we're gonna hunt down a whitetail deer, you know,
Speaker 1: go for the mastodon. And you know, if if you
Speaker 1: can coordinate a hunt and bring one down, you can
Speaker 1: feed your whole clan for a long time. Deer or
Speaker 1: not easy to kill. And so when they started having
Speaker 1: to rely on killing elk and deer and smaller animals,
Speaker 1: they had to come up with a different way to
Speaker 1: do that. And and so the point type technology really
Speaker 1: changed about ten thousand, five hundred years ago to about
Speaker 1: about eight thousand and years ago. Um. And and they
Speaker 1: weren't making these fluted points anymore. They were making different
Speaker 1: types of points that were placed on the end of
Speaker 1: a stick that was slung at an animal with a
Speaker 1: tool called on that laddle. Um. That's when that technology
Speaker 1: started somewhere around that. Well, that was what I was
Speaker 1: gonna ask it. So all the cloths points were spears, yes,
Speaker 1: they were probably on right, Yeah. And and they were
Speaker 1: having to surround those creatures and bring them down, you know,
Speaker 1: trap them in a watering hole something like that. But
Speaker 1: but all those disappeared and so they had to start,
Speaker 1: you know, hunting other things to survive. And they also
Speaker 1: started probably picking some berries. You know, in two or
Speaker 1: three thousand years of experience, there was probably somebody in
Speaker 1: that tribe of people that knew that the red berries
Speaker 1: were good and the blueberries were bad. And so then
Speaker 1: now they've got some kind of an idea of what's
Speaker 1: safe to eat and what's not. So they started foraging
Speaker 1: more and and and eating meat when they had it.
Speaker 1: They probably were eating a lot of muscles out of
Speaker 1: the you know, freshwater muscles, and and you a lot
Speaker 1: more things, eating rabbits and small mammals things like that.
Speaker 1: So everything changed, and in this particular region of the country, uh,
Speaker 1: one of the one of the most spectacular and fantastic
Speaker 1: point types in North American history evolved, and it's called
Speaker 1: the Dalton point uh and and around here Dalton points
Speaker 1: are highly regarded for their workmanship and for their quality,
Speaker 1: their size. Uh and in there they're a view very
Speaker 1: beautiful point type. And and that type persisted for maybe
Speaker 1: a thousand years. And that point type then evolved into
Speaker 1: probably several dozen other point types after that. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of the granddad that was that the first is
Speaker 1: that the next progression from Clovis Clovis Andalton right so
Speaker 1: close describe a Dalton a Dalton point, uh boy, some
Speaker 1: can be over a foot long. Most of them are
Speaker 1: two or three inches long. They're generally the outline, as
Speaker 1: they call it, auriculate, but it's it's shaped a lot
Speaker 1: like a Clovis point. Uh. And some of them have
Speaker 1: some fluting, but the fluting on them was created by
Speaker 1: different means. It wasn't They weren't hit directly with another rock.
Speaker 1: They were hit indirectly with something placed in between the
Speaker 1: point in the in the striking device. And a lot
Speaker 1: of Clovis points are excusing. Dalton points are not fluted
Speaker 1: at all, um, but they're they're very similar in outline,
Speaker 1: but you can look at them and see the way
Speaker 1: they're flake. The flaking patterns different, the fluting type is different.
Speaker 1: So this it's we're not just talking about and this
Speaker 1: isthing I learned earlier is we're not just talking about shapes.
Speaker 1: You're talking you're you guys are seeing technology. The way
Speaker 1: that they're flaking these points, you bet you can. You
Speaker 1: can look at the flaking pattern on a narrowhead and
Speaker 1: you can tell generally what time period is made from
Speaker 1: most of the time. Yeah, And and the way they
Speaker 1: made their era has changed through time. You know, the Clovis,
Speaker 1: the Clovis culture was Paleo and then the Dalton culture
Speaker 1: transitioned that Paleolithic lifestyle into a more uh a little
Speaker 1: bit more settled down lifestyle. And so they called this
Speaker 1: Dalton period the transitional Paleo period. And so they're very old,
Speaker 1: very old points, but they transitioned, um, these these hunters
Speaker 1: into a hunter gatherers and you know type of situation.
Speaker 1: And and that's the archaic and that's what came after
Speaker 1: the Dalton points. Um. And and these people were relying
Speaker 1: on anything they could get their hands on. They didn't
Speaker 1: travel nearly as far uh, and they were more people
Speaker 1: here too. They were starting right, and they were and
Speaker 1: they were starting to form I wouldn't call them tribes
Speaker 1: but clans maybe or groups of people that were inter related. Um.
Speaker 1: They probably met certain times of the year at big
Speaker 1: rivers and got together and shared technology, they shared stories.
Speaker 1: They probably uh married off daughters and sons to other
Speaker 1: tribes to you know, to to you know, prevent any inbreeding.
Speaker 1: And they did a lot of things. But they were
Speaker 1: but they were Archaic period that would be the third
Speaker 1: after the Dalton that's a period Paleo Dalton arcad you
Speaker 1: got it. And and the archaic can be further so
Speaker 1: divided into early, middle, and late. But for what we're
Speaker 1: talking about, just slumping it together it makes its gonna work. Um,
Speaker 1: And that's taken us to like eight thousand years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the early Arcaic probably started around maybe nine hundred years
Speaker 1: ago something like that and lasted till about five thousand,
Speaker 1: four thousand, a period, very long time period. And it's
Speaker 1: a it's a time period because of the progression of
Speaker 1: technology stayed the same. It's the time periods differentiated by
Speaker 1: a progression of technology. That and economy. That's the way
Speaker 1: everything for that five thousand year period was fairly stable.
Speaker 1: Fairly stable, yeah, in terms of what kind of animals
Speaker 1: were here, when, what kind of technology they had, how
Speaker 1: they were making a living actually, and I think and
Speaker 1: as those populations grew and they learned how to do things,
Speaker 1: life got a little easier for them. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: what happened after that is is that people started interconnecting
Speaker 1: with each other a lot more. Now, let's go back
Speaker 1: to the Dalton culture for just a few minutes. They're
Speaker 1: the first, Um, they're the first people in North America
Speaker 1: that that used woodworking tools. Uh as far as we know. Uh,
Speaker 1: they made an ads, a woodworking tool that's fairly diagnostic
Speaker 1: of their culture. And they were they were making dugout
Speaker 1: canoes and so they were the first people that were
Speaker 1: probably using waterways, um that we know of. And and
Speaker 1: they were also the first culture in North America to
Speaker 1: to bury their dead in a location over time. Now,
Speaker 1: all of these people most likely buried their dead, but
Speaker 1: these people buried them in the same locations repeatedly. And
Speaker 1: so the oldest known cemetery in North America is over
Speaker 1: in Green County, Arkansas, and it's called the Sloane Side
Speaker 1: uh and it was excavated in the nineteen eighties um
Speaker 1: by by Dan Morris and some other archaeologists from this area,
Speaker 1: and it was it was interpreted as that would be
Speaker 1: interpreted from an anthropological position as a pretty a fairly
Speaker 1: developed society. I mean, it's starting. It's coming from these
Speaker 1: people that were just like just just kind of spread out, uncivilized.
Speaker 1: And then this is showing, hey, these people are starting
Speaker 1: to they're getting some structure to their society that would
Speaker 1: have been in the Dalton period. By this time, there
Speaker 1: wasn't tribes, no, they were just people. We really when
Speaker 1: we think of the word tribe. We tend to think
Speaker 1: of Quapo cattle, you know, these names that we have.
Speaker 1: But these people, these people weren't. They didn't have names.
Speaker 1: See that's news to me, right there, Adam. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've never even thought of it that deep. Like I mean,
Speaker 1: I hear about these Native American names and tribes and
Speaker 1: would have thought that all these points could be brought
Speaker 1: back to a certain This is making a lot of
Speaker 1: sense to me. So that they were they were just people.
Speaker 1: They were just people. And then as this over ten
Speaker 1: thousand years, when society got really organized, that's when they
Speaker 1: started having these more modern tribes. And they probably didn't
Speaker 1: they probably didn't have a need for a name for
Speaker 1: us because they weren't coming across other people that often,
Speaker 1: so they didn't have to have didn't have to have
Speaker 1: reason to say I would be forged only when you
Speaker 1: had other people that you need to differentiate yourself from, right,
Speaker 1: and so you know, and and and also you have
Speaker 1: to remember they didn't have a written language, and so
Speaker 1: this stuff was not written down, has passed down through
Speaker 1: oral histories and and and I know Native Americans and
Speaker 1: they talked about the ancient ones, just like the Egyptians
Speaker 1: called to refer to their ancient ones. They're probably referring
Speaker 1: to people that were here a long time before they were,
Speaker 1: but didn't have a name, you know, just the ancient ones. Um.
Speaker 1: So going back to these adults as they were, they
Speaker 1: were very big group of people, and they they did
Speaker 1: things that hadn't been done before they started to settle
Speaker 1: down more. Uh. They made very high quality artifacts, mainly
Speaker 1: project all points. UM. They weren't into making any kind
Speaker 1: of artistic expression types of no, certainly no pottery, uh,
Speaker 1: no effigies of animals or anything like that. Um. But
Speaker 1: but they were they were a predecessor of many different
Speaker 1: types of points that evolved over the Archaic period. Uh.
Speaker 1: In the Archaic period in Arkansas is is a very
Speaker 1: interesting time period. UM. In northern Arkansas, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of caves and and there were a lot of
Speaker 1: groups of people that utilize those caves on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: You know, big overhangs. We've got these big limestone bluffs
Speaker 1: with big, beautiful great shelters. Well, most most people who
Speaker 1: hunt have been through some of these at some point
Speaker 1: or another and seen the smoke stains on the top
Speaker 1: of the cave. And that's old but they were utilizing
Speaker 1: these for shelter and stay warm, stay dry, and they
Speaker 1: were still probably in small bands at that point. But
Speaker 1: that's what the Archaic and Arkansas is all about. It
Speaker 1: was was people moving up and down these rivers and streams,
Speaker 1: trying to stay close to freshwater, trying to stay warm,
Speaker 1: trying to stay dry, trying to find some food and
Speaker 1: just eke out in a living You know, it was tough.
Speaker 1: You just can't we just we just can't imagine it.
Speaker 1: I don't want to pull you off of your because
Speaker 1: we're going down through the time periods and I it
Speaker 1: would be good to get kind of an overview of
Speaker 1: the different time periods. So maybe this question is gonna
Speaker 1: throw us off course, But when did they get to Arkansas?
Speaker 1: When they when did they get to Arkansas? We we
Speaker 1: have found Clovis points in Arkansas. They were here thirteen thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred years ago. Um. And and a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: you know at my house here in Iszer County near Melbourne.
Speaker 1: UM my house sits on top of the site that
Speaker 1: we find arrowheads in a lot. And my son Liam
Speaker 1: has found a Clovis point in our yard in our field.
Speaker 1: It's thirteen thousand, five hundred years old. So they were here.
Speaker 1: You know, they were here within you know that at
Speaker 1: least that technology was here. There may have been here
Speaker 1: people here before that, but we know that Clovis was
Speaker 1: here in Arkansas. There here are there Clovis on the
Speaker 1: East coast, you bet really bet Florida all the way
Speaker 1: up into New York and and even southern Canada. All
Speaker 1: the I would have I would have thought there would
Speaker 1: have been like a like a I mean, if they
Speaker 1: came from the barings trade, it seems like, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I guess that technology just scattered and there's no way
Speaker 1: to really tell what came before that. Are they were
Speaker 1: following food? You have to remember they were following food.
Speaker 1: Some of these later Archaic and Dalton cultures they may
Speaker 1: have been traveling, traveling up and down river systems and
Speaker 1: staying within a kind of a defined area that they
Speaker 1: called their own. But the but the Clovis people and
Speaker 1: these Paleolithic people, they were following food. If the if
Speaker 1: the mastodon went over there, they went over there. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was they just followed the food. How long it
Speaker 1: would take a gone foot to travel from Alaska to
Speaker 1: the East host of the United States. It's interesting because
Speaker 1: that study has been done and it takes a long
Speaker 1: time and then and that's one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: this doesn't make sense is because the dating period for
Speaker 1: Clovis points is just within a few hundred years, but
Speaker 1: they estimated with taken man a lot longer than that.
Speaker 1: Just hunting and following game to spread out through North
Speaker 1: America doesn't make sense. I wonder how fast a guy
Speaker 1: could do it if you just walk. I mean, like
Speaker 1: two years, take me a lot longer than that. I mean,
Speaker 1: they would have had no reason to just walking a debt.
Speaker 1: I mean, they wouldn't have done that. But if you
Speaker 1: think about it from that perspective though, like I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe they could have in five years walked from there
Speaker 1: east coast. So I guess when you think about it
Speaker 1: like that, it's not as big a stretch as you
Speaker 1: might think. Yeah, but you gotta remember too, there were
Speaker 1: no roads. There was nothing. There's nobody even to tell
Speaker 1: you which way to go, you know, So it was
Speaker 1: more meandering than it was walking the straight line anywhere,
Speaker 1: but up and down mountains. Can you imagine they didn't
Speaker 1: know where the mountain passes were. They didn't know, you know,
Speaker 1: and they had to fallow water. And so anytime you
Speaker 1: had to fallow water, you're you're not walking a straight line.
Speaker 1: You're following a river, which is rarely a straight line.
Speaker 1: And they didn't have any reason to move other than
Speaker 1: food or maybe they've been pushed out by something another group.
Speaker 1: So it's like it's not like they were trying to
Speaker 1: go somewhere. They were just trying to get to the
Speaker 1: next place that they could make a living. Right Imagine
Speaker 1: imagine walking out into the bare woods with all your
Speaker 1: stuff and knowing you're never coming back home again, and
Speaker 1: whatever you had with you, that's what you had to
Speaker 1: survive with, you know, and then you had to make it.
Speaker 1: When you ran out of it, you had to make
Speaker 1: more of it or you didn't get anymore. You know,
Speaker 1: are heads or points or arrows or whatever. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's beyond our comprehension. We have it so until today,
Speaker 1: it's it's tough to think about. You know, I've been
Speaker 1: out hunting before and after a few hours my feet
Speaker 1: get cold and I'm done. You know, they couldn't be done.
Speaker 1: What do they think the lifespan of the like paleo
Speaker 1: people would have been thirty years. Yeah, that's a that's
Speaker 1: a probably a pretty good estimate. You know, they probably
Speaker 1: died of t or you know, some type of disease.
Speaker 1: That's right. These people probably looked a lot older than
Speaker 1: they were. Yeah, yeah, I think about that. A thirty
Speaker 1: year old man being an old man culture probably a
Speaker 1: wise man. He's seen a lot, probably after thirty years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So what comes after arcic archaic? Well, the archaic the
Speaker 1: arcaic is replaced by a time period called the Woodland
Speaker 1: time period. And in the Woodland time period again can
Speaker 1: be divided into two or three more um time periods,
Speaker 1: but we'll stick with just Woodland. They were much more settled. Um.
Speaker 1: They started developing pottery. Uh, they learned to use clay.
Speaker 1: They used to had a little more free time than
Speaker 1: they did. They did, they started making some art. Well,
Speaker 1: they had figured out where the good spots were. It's
Speaker 1: like it's like you don't tell somebody where your good
Speaker 1: airhead spot is. They had found where the good places
Speaker 1: to live were, and they stayed there, you know, And
Speaker 1: and they started learning to gather a lot more and
Speaker 1: and maybe a little bit of planting of things going on.
Speaker 1: Maybe he's planning some wild wild seeds and starting to
Speaker 1: know how to do this, developing that kind of knowledge. UM.
Speaker 1: But that allowed the Native Americans in North America a
Speaker 1: lot more free time. And that's an important thing because
Speaker 1: when that happens, UM cultures start creating things of beauty,
Speaker 1: things that reflect their identity UM, who they are. And
Speaker 1: and that's that's important because the hope Well tradition that
Speaker 1: that kind of sprouted out in Indiana and Ohio and
Speaker 1: Illinois and Tennessee and Kentucky UM had its roots spread
Speaker 1: out all across the United States. They're they're bringing in
Speaker 1: obsidian from the western United States that can be found
Speaker 1: in mounds in Ohio. Uh So the hope Well tradition
Speaker 1: was basically this idea that these tribes were coming together
Speaker 1: to trade. It probably was probably wasn't one group of people,
Speaker 1: but it was lots of groups of people that were
Speaker 1: interconnected by networks and trading and understanding UM. And so
Speaker 1: they're you know, they're bringing in mica from Georgia. They're
Speaker 1: bringing counk shells from the Gulf of Mexico, and and
Speaker 1: pick and church from north central Arkansas. Uh They're bringing
Speaker 1: in the finest materials from everywhere, and they're trading things
Speaker 1: now and so things are more stable. Um, they've got
Speaker 1: a lot more access to to better food, more calories,
Speaker 1: better shelter. They're learning how to do things, and from
Speaker 1: that really erupted an artistic movement from Native Americans. That's
Speaker 1: that's wow. It's they make they would make um clay
Speaker 1: pipes that they would they were starting to use copper
Speaker 1: uh to make plates and and ornamental objects. Uh, a
Speaker 1: lot of what we call effigies um. And effigy is
Speaker 1: a is a representation of usually an animal or a person.
Speaker 1: But they would turn those into into pipes and decorative
Speaker 1: objects and pendance and all kinds of things. So we
Speaker 1: have a lot of that knowledge and the Woodland period,
Speaker 1: which when when would the woodland time period have been?
Speaker 1: It probably would start around thirty years ago and maybe
Speaker 1: go to about just like yesterday. Yeah, as it was,
Speaker 1: it was not it's it's still very old, but it's
Speaker 1: that it's much younger than these people that were chasing
Speaker 1: the mastodon um. And then you know, after this woodland period,
Speaker 1: the cities of North America started to develop and you know,
Speaker 1: you have to think about um, you know, poverty point
Speaker 1: down in Louisiana UH Mounds that were made over just
Speaker 1: east of Little Rock Toll Tech Mounds, and and and
Speaker 1: and you know the mounds up in in uh southern Illinois,
Speaker 1: the Khokia Mounds. This really transitioned into the Mississippian period.
Speaker 1: It's called um people were living on much larger. Is
Speaker 1: that the final period? This is the final period before contact,
Speaker 1: last precontinent. Let me try this, Paleo Dalton archaic woodland Mississippi.
Speaker 1: You got it, man, I've heard those words my whole
Speaker 1: life and every it's real confusing unless you just, yeah,
Speaker 1: sit down and just do what we're doing here exactly.
Speaker 1: And and it's taking me fifteen years of a lot
Speaker 1: of time to to learn all this stuff into and
Speaker 1: you know, to acquire a collection of points from all
Speaker 1: these different time periods so you can really visually see it. Well,
Speaker 1: it makes sense in front of it. And so the
Speaker 1: the woodland, would that have been the time period when
Speaker 1: the tribes begin to probably so build some identity and
Speaker 1: have names, right, I would say so they probably had
Speaker 1: identities at that point. And and and they were interconnected
Speaker 1: in the using waterways to travel much easier with large
Speaker 1: amounts of goods things like that. And from that's when
Speaker 1: these big cities, you know, erupted, and that probably had
Speaker 1: a lot to do with the introduction from of maize
Speaker 1: from Central America. Now, corn's got calories. We all know
Speaker 1: that now, uh, and so we try to stay away
Speaker 1: from too much of it. But back then that was
Speaker 1: a big deal. Calories are a big deal. And so
Speaker 1: when they started getting these extra calories, they didn't have
Speaker 1: to try so hard for food anymore. They could plan
Speaker 1: it and harvest it. And so they started building these mounds,
Speaker 1: one bucket of dirt at a time, and they built
Speaker 1: these huge cities. One of the things we don't know
Speaker 1: is why did these cities fall apart? What the social
Speaker 1: structure fell apart? And by the time Europeans got here,
Speaker 1: a lot of these cities had been abandoned for a
Speaker 1: long time, so they were gone a long time. Did
Speaker 1: they build the mounds to keep out of the floods?
Speaker 1: Probably not. They probably had a hierarchical structure to their societies,
Speaker 1: like having a big mansion on the hill, you bet,
Speaker 1: and and the and the guy that was running everything
Speaker 1: or the girl I guess was living on top of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was so when Europeans got here, they
Speaker 1: found remnants of these cities just like today. You bet, yeah,
Speaker 1: for the most part. Uh. You know, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of accounts of DeSoto coming across tribes in eastern
Speaker 1: Arkansas that are felt to be Quapaw uh or no
Speaker 1: Dina maybe tribes, um, but but they were kind of
Speaker 1: they were a little bit scattered by the end. They
Speaker 1: weren't living in these hues, so that there was a
Speaker 1: stronger population of people pre European settlement. Yes, I mean, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess the idea, what I would think is that
Speaker 1: the Native American cultures were at their peak and then
Speaker 1: Europeans showed up and broke it all up. But that's
Speaker 1: not necessarily it's not necessarily true at all. And in
Speaker 1: my mind, my my personal way of thinking about this
Speaker 1: is that by the time Europeans got here, Native Americans
Speaker 1: were almost in this post apocalyptic stage. Something happened, and
Speaker 1: they really don't know what happened in a lot of
Speaker 1: these large cities in places that existed, They really don't
Speaker 1: know if it had to do with disease or warfare
Speaker 1: or a drought. Is that across the country. Um, I
Speaker 1: know you're talking about these Arkansas sites in the delta
Speaker 1: of our bet you bet you know you could get
Speaker 1: out into in a masa their day, uh and and
Speaker 1: see the Anasazi there there entire city that were carved
Speaker 1: into the walls of rocks. And these people just up
Speaker 1: and disappeared just in a very short period of time.
Speaker 1: There really nobody knows why. You know, it's a lot
Speaker 1: of these, but I think they're trying to get enough
Speaker 1: information together where they can kind of put the puzzle together. Now.
Speaker 1: So that's that's eye opening to me. I I didn't
Speaker 1: realize that. So now we did. We don't get me wrong.
Speaker 1: We did some damage too, I tell you that. But
Speaker 1: but you know it was it was the last nail
Speaker 1: on the coffin, I think, you know. And well, hey,
Speaker 1: that that really helps me. That that breaks down all
Speaker 1: these periods in a pretty simple way. Um, I want
Speaker 1: to go back to the to the stone projectile point.
Speaker 1: So there's all these there's lots of different things that
Speaker 1: you could find out here, you know, these axe heads
Speaker 1: or grinding stones. I mean there's they left. They used
Speaker 1: stone a lot, but they used to projectile stone point. Okay,
Speaker 1: we said at in the the closes period, they were
Speaker 1: just hand thrown spears. Then when we got into the
Speaker 1: Archaic period, they started using the addleaddle, which if you
Speaker 1: don't know what add ale, let's go look it up. Well,
Speaker 1: it's just a it helps you throw a spear like
Speaker 1: twice as fast a t L A t L. Just
Speaker 1: google that and you get a visual of it. When
Speaker 1: did when did they get bow and arrows? Bow and
Speaker 1: arrows were very late development, probably not until the Woodland
Speaker 1: at least, and maybe the Mississippi in the adds. So
Speaker 1: for five thousand years they were using an Did the
Speaker 1: bow cancel out the adladdle? No? Um? When Europeans got here,
Speaker 1: there were still groups of people in this country that
Speaker 1: we're using those. Uh it was so the bow and
Speaker 1: arrow had not completely replaced it um at all, you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: but the adeladdle would have been better for killing big
Speaker 1: stuff though probably so because it's a it's it's I mean,
Speaker 1: you're you're chucking a much bigger you're chucking a spear.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like using a thirty yacht six for
Speaker 1: an elk and you know, using a two seventy for
Speaker 1: a white tail dear, I mean, pick your pick your
Speaker 1: weapon for what you're you know, know core, you know
Speaker 1: what's going to break it down. Where did the archery
Speaker 1: technology come from? That's a good question. Um did it
Speaker 1: start up everywhere all over the planet at the same
Speaker 1: time it had it? It did develop all over the
Speaker 1: world and within a relatively short time span. Is that
Speaker 1: now you said convergent you talked about like, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: conversion evolution. Was that technology? That technology would have had
Speaker 1: to have been connected you think it would, but it
Speaker 1: had it started happening here at the same time that
Speaker 1: started happening. Where else? Did they have bows? Oh, they
Speaker 1: have bows and arrows in Africa, the Aborigines in Australia, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, over in in Asia. All of these different
Speaker 1: aboriginals were using this technology at about the same time period.
Speaker 1: Nobody really knows how that happened. I mean, that's that's crazy.
Speaker 1: Because there was no email, there's no Internet. It would
Speaker 1: have had to have been human to human if if
Speaker 1: the technology was shared, would had to have been human
Speaker 1: to human contact aliens. I don't know. It means that
Speaker 1: somebody would have had to have gotten from North America
Speaker 1: to Europe perfect. I mean, it's that really is such
Speaker 1: a mystery, or or maybe just in the progression. Like
Speaker 1: if you think of this is like a board game,
Speaker 1: and the board game is is that you're this human
Speaker 1: it's dropped onto this planet. You gotta make a living
Speaker 1: and you start napping stones together. Maybe there's some connection
Speaker 1: and progression there is of just what you would do.
Speaker 1: I mean is that do people say that? And and
Speaker 1: that makes makes sense? So in theory you could like
Speaker 1: they could discover the same technology at the same time
Speaker 1: as here disconnected just because of the way they were
Speaker 1: living their life. Okay. You know if if two different
Speaker 1: cultures on the other side of the world, you know,
Speaker 1: developed a wheel at the same point, at some point
Speaker 1: they're gonna decide they're gonna hook two up together, so
Speaker 1: they both invented an axl, you know, it's the same
Speaker 1: type of thing. Yeah, I think it is a natural progression.
Speaker 1: And it's also you know, necessity is the mother of invention.
Speaker 1: As the game got smaller and we pretty much eradicated
Speaker 1: a lot of the larger species here, there was a
Speaker 1: need to shoot uh smaller quarries also, which bow would
Speaker 1: have been good, right right right? And you know a
Speaker 1: lot of people call the types of arrows that that
Speaker 1: Mississippi and period people use bird points. And then you know,
Speaker 1: there a lot of a lot of things going around
Speaker 1: people saying that they use them to shoot birds. Well
Speaker 1: that's not true. They just I don't know why they
Speaker 1: call them that, but they do. We call them arrow
Speaker 1: points because it was a true arrow point. They were
Speaker 1: shot on the bow and arrow. Um. Now the bigger
Speaker 1: so this would be a question I would have I
Speaker 1: have found small points that are like an inch long
Speaker 1: an inch wide, let's just say an inch by an
Speaker 1: inch Certainly that would have been connected to an arrow
Speaker 1: shaft possibly, but that's also large enough to be connected
Speaker 1: to a you know, a half inch wide shaft on
Speaker 1: a on a dards. So yeah, only the smallest ones
Speaker 1: were probably uses true error points, but there's no way
Speaker 1: to know for sure. You know, um, there are there
Speaker 1: are historical documentation of of the type some of the
Speaker 1: types of arrow points that we know of today that
Speaker 1: we're being used on arrows when people got here, and
Speaker 1: so we know some of those point types were definitely
Speaker 1: being used on arrows. Yeah, okay, so we're talking about
Speaker 1: stone projectile points. You said that there was a reason
Speaker 1: that they would have liked like this fluted Dalton point,
Speaker 1: and if if you're in front of a computer and
Speaker 1: listen to this. Just type in Dalton point. You can understand.
Speaker 1: We can describe it, but it's almost too hard to
Speaker 1: describe verbally to get a good picture. But what I want,
Speaker 1: what I want to step into now is the different
Speaker 1: types of points and get to this calf creek point. Okay,
Speaker 1: but start with the start with the Dolts or the Clovis.
Speaker 1: Start with the Clovis. And why So it's a real
Speaker 1: specific technology. But why and and and our people understand
Speaker 1: that because we're bow hunters, and I mean we talked
Speaker 1: about broadheads all the time and different types of animals.
Speaker 1: I've been bo hunting for about twenty years twenty five
Speaker 1: years now, and I've seen the technology and broadheads changed
Speaker 1: dramatically in a very short period of time. You know,
Speaker 1: with with use, you understand what works and what doesn't,
Speaker 1: what may be better. And there's a lot of different
Speaker 1: people out there experimenting to see what works better now. Um,
Speaker 1: But but they were doing the same thing. You know,
Speaker 1: they got back from a hunt, sat down and said, hey,
Speaker 1: what went wrong? And so somebody, somebody figured out a
Speaker 1: way to do something a little bit different in these
Speaker 1: clothes people. They were fluting their points. They were basically
Speaker 1: thinning the point at the base of the airhead the
Speaker 1: project where it was hafted onto the shaft of the
Speaker 1: hafting element. And and most people believe that was to
Speaker 1: thin it out to make it where it was, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of lower lower the profile of the area of
Speaker 1: that shaft directly attached to the to the airhead's better penetration. Probably,
Speaker 1: So yeah, so that okay, So so that the because
Speaker 1: they would have her taking a stick split it shoved
Speaker 1: this air this stone point down in there. Yes, And
Speaker 1: so if the air head at the base of it
Speaker 1: was super thick, then it would make that would fold
Speaker 1: out even further if it was thinner, So it was
Speaker 1: an issue of penetration. Then that's what most people believe
Speaker 1: and have believe for all the time. I've read a
Speaker 1: study that was done here fairly recently that showed that
Speaker 1: the thinning they there. They believed that the thinning that
Speaker 1: the fluting was done because it lessened the likelihood that
Speaker 1: the point would break when it did penetrate an animal.
Speaker 1: There's some type of a shock absorbing property to thinning
Speaker 1: that point, like you know, that's that's still exactly. That's
Speaker 1: my point that those people weren't thinking, how can I
Speaker 1: make this, how can I design this? They didn't have
Speaker 1: a wind tunnel or any way of testing this theory
Speaker 1: that I don't believe that. I really don't. I think
Speaker 1: they were trying to thin it down. Maybe maybe it's true,
Speaker 1: but that's not why they did right. Right, Maybe that happened,
Speaker 1: maybe that it did decrease the breakage percentage, whatever, but
Speaker 1: I don't think that's why they were doing it though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they you know, they progressed into Dalton points. Uh,
Speaker 1: things changed a little bit. Dalton points transitioned into probably
Speaker 1: twenty or twenty five different points. Did they did they
Speaker 1: necessarily get better over time? Well, it depends on how
Speaker 1: you define better. Better means more if if better is
Speaker 1: more suited for your environment? Yes, by definition, because Dalton
Speaker 1: points were not what was needed during the woodland period,
Speaker 1: and so the points that were made during the woodland
Speaker 1: met their needs better than Dalton points would have. So
Speaker 1: you can only you can only surmise that the best
Speaker 1: point to existed with the technology. I guess the technology
Speaker 1: never went backwards, No, and theyone never really did. Every
Speaker 1: everything changed, Um, so you get into the Archaic period,
Speaker 1: and you've got this early Middle and laid Archaic, And
Speaker 1: you wanted to talk about calf Creek points a little bit. Uh.
Speaker 1: They are that they're beautiful. They're very wide and can
Speaker 1: be long, but they're generally fairly short. And and they
Speaker 1: have notching deep notching that can be sometimes a half
Speaker 1: an inch or an inch deep that goes into the
Speaker 1: base of the arahead. They're hard to describe um, but
Speaker 1: they're they're very unique. And and there are similar point
Speaker 1: types called Andus and Bell points that are found more
Speaker 1: down into Texas, but it's generally believed they're the same
Speaker 1: era ahead and they're the same projectile point um. But
Speaker 1: they're they're gorgeous points. They're unique. There's nothing like them
Speaker 1: anywhere else in North America. And then they're from right
Speaker 1: here they are. They start up central in the we're
Speaker 1: kind of in the east central ozark Yeah, I would say.
Speaker 1: And and you know these points can be found up
Speaker 1: into central Missouri, down into north central and central Arkansas,
Speaker 1: over into northern Texas, northern Louisiana over and it comes
Speaker 1: as much of Kansas and Oklahoma. Also. These people we
Speaker 1: know we're hunting bison they were hunting bison with these,
Speaker 1: and for a long time it was believed that this
Speaker 1: was a knife type. It was not a projectile point,
Speaker 1: and that's been disproven. And if you have internet access,
Speaker 1: you need to look this up. There was a calf
Speaker 1: Creek point that was found embedded in a bison skull,
Speaker 1: and and studies were done on it and it was authenticated.
Speaker 1: There's always a question when you find something like that,
Speaker 1: did somebody shoved that in there? But that it's been
Speaker 1: well studied and it's been proven to be the real deal.
Speaker 1: So they were, they were chunking these things at bison
Speaker 1: and you met probably the most likely when when were
Speaker 1: these what period time period with the calf Creek of
Speaker 1: the Middle and late Archadic, so they would have been
Speaker 1: using that point. And so yeah, so this calf Creek
Speaker 1: technology is like way different. It would have u I
Speaker 1: think in modern terms, Adam, we would have called this
Speaker 1: almost like a barbed broadhead. A barbed broadhead by definition,
Speaker 1: means that the the blade of the point extends below
Speaker 1: the point where the arrow touches the broadhead, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's regulations about it, like in Alaska and Idaho, you
Speaker 1: can't use the barb broadhead. Yeah, because the it's like
Speaker 1: where it goes down, so like on these calf creek points,
Speaker 1: the the halft's it seems like that with the blades
Speaker 1: have extended below where the halft went up, they most
Speaker 1: definitely would have sometimes even an inch. This is totally
Speaker 1: Barba Alaska. Well they they what that did is it
Speaker 1: is it increased the cutting edge on it and if
Speaker 1: they can shove that thing into into there. You know,
Speaker 1: lethality is not necessarily always about penetration. Uh. It had
Speaker 1: a lot of times it has to do with how
Speaker 1: much stuff can you cut? These are wide right, and
Speaker 1: I've shot deer with a bow that didn't run nearly
Speaker 1: as far as a deer. And I've shot with a
Speaker 1: thirty ot six you know that went out the outside
Speaker 1: of the because you shoot, you shoot an arrow in
Speaker 1: there and it's cutting stuff. That thing bleeds out real quick.
Speaker 1: A lot of times when it drops real quick if
Speaker 1: you can hit the a order or something like that.
Speaker 1: And so they were onto something, you know they were.
Speaker 1: These aren't real sharp points. Well when I say sharp,
Speaker 1: I mean like some of these, like the the closest
Speaker 1: points are like these long. They don't have an acute
Speaker 1: angle on the tip of it. I think it's kind
Speaker 1: of more around and around. Yeah, and and by the
Speaker 1: location where this you know, calf Creek Point was found.
Speaker 1: In this bison skull um, it looks like it was
Speaker 1: trying to be and they were trying to shoot it
Speaker 1: in the back of the neck or maybe up in
Speaker 1: the neck area. I think they were onto Something's my
Speaker 1: my opinion. I think they were trying to cut it,
Speaker 1: you know, Okay, they were like this is where you
Speaker 1: want to hit one. They would have been just like,
Speaker 1: that's like, this is where you shoot a deer. Why
Speaker 1: would you want to shoot a bison through the thickest
Speaker 1: part of the body, you know, where it's got a
Speaker 1: big hump full of fat, you know, when you've got
Speaker 1: to expose neck veins, you know, jug your veins, carotto arteries,
Speaker 1: things like that. You know. So that's my opinion for it,
Speaker 1: and just for just to say it, there would have
Speaker 1: totally been bison here. I mean, even even in the
Speaker 1: eight teen hundreds that were bison in Arkansas, you've been
Speaker 1: elk and mountain lions and tons of crazy stuff. And
Speaker 1: I've read some really unbelievable numbers on how many bison
Speaker 1: at one time rome the United States. Uh, it was
Speaker 1: in the tens of millions. I mean maybe as many
Speaker 1: as eighty or ninety or a hundred million bison in
Speaker 1: North America. That's a lot. You know. Kind of debunked
Speaker 1: that greenhouse gas thing too from cows too, because there
Speaker 1: were lots of yeah, putting out some greenhouse gas. So
Speaker 1: the Calf Creek though, uh, now wise Calf Creek, If
Speaker 1: there's Calf Creek other places, why do we know that
Speaker 1: it started here? Or is this like the epicenter of it?
Speaker 1: Really is the first place that these were described or
Speaker 1: found and described was it was in a cave up
Speaker 1: in Searcy County, Arkansas called Calf Creek Cave. It's also
Speaker 1: called Snowball Cave. It's it's actually has another name too,
Speaker 1: I've heard too. But but Don Dickinson and archaeologist, did
Speaker 1: a lot of excavation up in hal Creek Cave and
Speaker 1: and found these there. Um and so he named the
Speaker 1: point type after Calf Creek. Uh. But this this and
Speaker 1: they found the technology and other places they did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so this area really if you were going to
Speaker 1: put a pin in the middle of the distribution, it
Speaker 1: would probably be somewhere around Arkansas. I would say, yeah,
Speaker 1: if I can find one of those of my friends,
Speaker 1: I'm sure could, Yeah can and and and I've we've
Speaker 1: found a piece of one here at the Gray Side
Speaker 1: in in Iszard County. Yeah. Yeah, so they're here, you know,
Speaker 1: And and and they hunted primarily bison, you know, that's
Speaker 1: what they were doing. They were still that was their
Speaker 1: economy was bison hunting, you know. And that would have
Speaker 1: been in the period right right, probably middle and late Arcaic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: um man, that clarifies a lot. That is awesome and perfect.
Speaker 1: Anybody that that there is that's listening, you ought to
Speaker 1: look up a calf creek projectif point, just to get
Speaker 1: a visual what that looks like. They're just absolutely you've
Speaker 1: got just five or six here, yea in your collection
Speaker 1: or maybe more than that. Yeah, and they're they're one
Speaker 1: of my favorites there. You know, anybody's got a nice
Speaker 1: calf creek and they're they're actually one of the more
Speaker 1: valuable point types because they're so rare. Those ears that
Speaker 1: stick down so far they break. Uh, they're they're most
Speaker 1: often found broken, you know, how far if you if
Speaker 1: you have an intact calf creek point. You have a
Speaker 1: nice point. Yeah, that's something. Yeah, um man, that answers
Speaker 1: a whole lot of questions that I had. Is there? Well,
Speaker 1: let me transition into another another section. What about people
Speaker 1: finding points? How do you find stone points? There are
Speaker 1: a lot of different ways to do that. Um I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people just walk creeks for some reason.
Speaker 1: You know, the sites that contain these points were on water.
Speaker 1: They were on creeks and floods come through and they
Speaker 1: rode out a bank and they wash into the creek
Speaker 1: and you and you find them and they just become
Speaker 1: a part of the creek system. They're just in gravel bars,
Speaker 1: just rolling along. Would you say, this is the thought
Speaker 1: that I've had I found a few points in creeks,
Speaker 1: is that you find like gravel distributes based upon size,
Speaker 1: and creeks is based upon water. For like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's areas of a gravel bar, whether it's the big rocks,
Speaker 1: small rocks, fine rocks. So you look in the areas
Speaker 1: where there's the size rocks that would be the size
Speaker 1: of a projectile point. Is that right? Exactly right? Because
Speaker 1: they that that creek starts to filter out stuff based
Speaker 1: inside it sure does. It's just like it's just like
Speaker 1: panting for gold. You start filtering out bigger stuff and
Speaker 1: then smaller and smaller, and eventually you work it down
Speaker 1: to you've got a layer of stuff and then it's
Speaker 1: got the gold dust. And same thing with air heads,
Speaker 1: once you figure out where you're looking. I've got a
Speaker 1: little nooking down here in my creek that I've been
Speaker 1: wanting to look at. It makes a hard, sharp right
Speaker 1: hand turn at the bottom of it. It's a lot
Speaker 1: deeper there than it is just upstream. And all these
Speaker 1: rocks are are are layering down in the bottom of
Speaker 1: this as they fall out of the current. And so
Speaker 1: we're gonna get down there one of these days with
Speaker 1: a shovel and just and just take shovels full of
Speaker 1: that and and run it through the screen and see
Speaker 1: what you know. You know, it's it's trial and air.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's neat. So walk on creeks. That's one
Speaker 1: way to do it, Okay, what else? Um Walking fields
Speaker 1: that have been plowed for agriculture is another way to
Speaker 1: do it too. That's probably the biggest, biggest it has
Speaker 1: been for the last hundred and fifty years. But that's
Speaker 1: changing a lot because they've gone to a lot of
Speaker 1: no till technology now, especially up in the in the
Speaker 1: Midwestern States. They're they're trying to conserve that layer of
Speaker 1: good dirt and so they're they're they're drilling stuff in now,
Speaker 1: a lot less of it now. But this is this
Speaker 1: is how a lot of this stuff got found. You know,
Speaker 1: old collection points that they would plow a field with mules.
Speaker 1: And I've heard stories here in my yard where we
Speaker 1: find these points that they were actually plowing this field
Speaker 1: with mules and they would pick up these earrawheads and
Speaker 1: sometimes they were pretty good size and very sharp. They
Speaker 1: would put them in buckets and go dump them out
Speaker 1: somewhere to keep the mules from cutting their feet, you know.
Speaker 1: And they didn't even regard these things as being anything
Speaker 1: culturally important or valuable or anything. They were a pain
Speaker 1: in their rear. You know. It's like finding a knock
Speaker 1: blade out in your yard and you throw it to
Speaker 1: the edge, you know, cut something get out of It's incredible. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine that. You know, here's a question about plowing.
Speaker 1: How deep are these are? Because I've I've heard a
Speaker 1: friend of mine, a friend of ours over here, Paul Lee.
Speaker 1: There they do some digging on private land. You can't
Speaker 1: dig on public land. I gotta have you gotta have big, big, big, big,
Speaker 1: big no notes. So that's But if you have private
Speaker 1: land and you have perbition a chair land, you can
Speaker 1: dig some of these limestone bluffs and stuff. And they're
Speaker 1: finding points like way deep in the ground. That doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense to me. Yeah, it depends, um. You know,
Speaker 1: older stuff is deeper. That's the general coming. Sediment is
Speaker 1: just built up, and it kind of depends on how
Speaker 1: fast the sentiment's building up. If you've got a creek
Speaker 1: that ever gets under the floodplain, you know of of
Speaker 1: a creek and it this overhangs getting flooded and silt
Speaker 1: and sands washing in there, it could be it could
Speaker 1: be stuff buried and right, it could be ten fifteen
Speaker 1: feet deep, but it may just be in is. You
Speaker 1: just don't know. Um. And so if you're looking for
Speaker 1: for place for places to hunt, you go into a cave,
Speaker 1: they say, And I've never dug a cave. I haven't
Speaker 1: had that experience yet. But you go back to the
Speaker 1: back of the cave and dig straight down and you
Speaker 1: define how deep the artifacts are, you know, just dig
Speaker 1: dig it straight down. So but I haven't had the
Speaker 1: chance to do that yet. Well and and yeah, hopefully
Speaker 1: he'll hear this, Yeah, because my question was about like
Speaker 1: in your plowed field, like are you I mean there's
Speaker 1: a point where there just isn't anything below that it stop?
Speaker 1: Where is that? Uh? Different for everywhere it is, And
Speaker 1: it's different even in this field here. Uh, some places
Speaker 1: we have found stuff down that it's probably two feet deep.
Speaker 1: In some places it's very shallow before you hit that
Speaker 1: clay layer that doesn't have anything in it. Kind of
Speaker 1: depends on the topography and what's erode it off, what's
Speaker 1: washed off, and what hasn't. So it could be on
Speaker 1: the surface it could be two three ft deep, because
Speaker 1: it just depends, you know, because these people have been
Speaker 1: here for fifteen thousand years, thirteen thousand years, just sentiment changes,
Speaker 1: soiled builds soil. You know. One of the interesting things
Speaker 1: about this field here that I have at my house
Speaker 1: where we where we find points that ezer Kenny is
Speaker 1: not exactly well known for its high quality soil. You know.
Speaker 1: Nowhere in those we've got a few rocks here, but
Speaker 1: this particular field has actually got really good soil and
Speaker 1: uh in. My opinion is is that it probably is
Speaker 1: an accumulated bio layer of occupation. Over a long period
Speaker 1: of time, these people were, you know, eating, and they
Speaker 1: had refuse and things like that, and it just builds
Speaker 1: up a good organic layer of dirt in it. It's
Speaker 1: just kind of strange walking creeks, plowing fields. We just
Speaker 1: talked about digging in overhangs, which is something that is
Speaker 1: common in the Ozarks. Only on private land where you
Speaker 1: have permission. They'll throw you in jail. In public land,
Speaker 1: that's a big deal. So what what other ways do
Speaker 1: you find their flea markets? Let somebody else find out. No, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, everybody in this county knows that I'm an
Speaker 1: airhead collector. So I find I have a lot of
Speaker 1: people come to me and you know, want me to
Speaker 1: look at their stuff. And so sometimes you find them
Speaker 1: without having to set foot out of your house. But
Speaker 1: but going back to finding them other ways you can
Speaker 1: find them, you know, Liam you have any other ideas
Speaker 1: how you find them, it's what about like location? Because
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm actually formulating an article that I'm going
Speaker 1: to write about how to find stone projectile points. So
Speaker 1: I'm I'm take usurping resource from you to write my article. Uh,
Speaker 1: what about you told me that this like where you live.
Speaker 1: Describe to me why this is a good site because
Speaker 1: right here just a random piece of property. You bought
Speaker 1: them quote unquote random to build your house here, and
Speaker 1: you found, i mean hundreds of stone projectile points and flakes,
Speaker 1: and well, what makes this good? Like if somebody were
Speaker 1: go out and find something like this on their own.
Speaker 1: My dad always told me good property is good property.
Speaker 1: And if it's good property now, it a good property
Speaker 1: ten thousand years ago. It's that it's got water on it.
Speaker 1: And you know you've got some springs, You've got water,
Speaker 1: water holes, game, water makes things grow and it's flat,
Speaker 1: right yeah, And so you know you're looking for for
Speaker 1: places that have springs coming out of nowhere, good cold
Speaker 1: water that's running water. You know, those people knew that
Speaker 1: drinking stagnant water was probably not very good for you,
Speaker 1: and sure did, they sure did, And so they stay
Speaker 1: pretty close to water. And uh, and they lived close
Speaker 1: to water, and where they lived is where they drop things.
Speaker 1: And so that's probably the number one. Now, the Paleo
Speaker 1: people were maybe a little bit different. If you're looking
Speaker 1: for for Clovis points or things like that, you're probably
Speaker 1: gonna be looking for um an area where they may
Speaker 1: have been trying to catch mammoth or masted on crossing
Speaker 1: a creek. In a really hilly area like this, there
Speaker 1: tend to be lower areas where animals still to this
Speaker 1: day cross the creek more frequently than they do. Then
Speaker 1: you know, they're not gonna go from one bluff over
Speaker 1: to the other bluff. They're gonna go look for a
Speaker 1: low spot, and that's where they'd ambush these things where
Speaker 1: they can't get away. You know, they get them down
Speaker 1: in a lower area like that, and in water, you know,
Speaker 1: five feet of water is gonna make a mask of
Speaker 1: dawn a heck of a lot less tenacious than if
Speaker 1: he's up on his you know, getting more is weak.
Speaker 1: So that's that's where they find a lot of these
Speaker 1: is is lower areas creek cross and that's paleo. But
Speaker 1: after that you're looking for springs. You're looking for water
Speaker 1: more than anything. You know, this is just a the
Speaker 1: way that I've found heads is uh, you've got to
Speaker 1: have bare dirt. You're not gonna find an air head
Speaker 1: underneath a layer of thick leaves. Out in the woods,
Speaker 1: You're not gonna find an air head under a layer
Speaker 1: of thick grass. And so like the places I deer hunt,
Speaker 1: the places I coon hunt. Last night I went coon hunt.
Speaker 1: I was looking for air heads the whole time on
Speaker 1: cattle trails. And then like and and just wherever there's
Speaker 1: bared dirt, you have the potential to find an airhead.
Speaker 1: And as the as the soil washes away in these
Speaker 1: places where there's exposed dirt because of livestock or because
Speaker 1: up whatever it could be where they I mean, the
Speaker 1: first airhead I found on my property actually wasn't because
Speaker 1: of my mules. It was because I was pushing some
Speaker 1: brush with my tractor and skinned up the ground. And
Speaker 1: like three weeks later after it rained and it washed
Speaker 1: the dirt, the surface of the dirt off I found ahead.
Speaker 1: So basically, just anywhere there's an exposed bank, creek bank,
Speaker 1: I've heard of people finding them on cut banks of
Speaker 1: a creek, you know, like the outside bend of a
Speaker 1: creek that where it's continually cutting. That happens a lot.
Speaker 1: You'll you'll come across a cut bank like that and
Speaker 1: you'll see some flint or maybe some even some muscle shells,
Speaker 1: like discarded muscle shells or something like that that showed
Speaker 1: a habitation area, and then you know it's on you
Speaker 1: know that's where it is. Well, And that's another good point.
Speaker 1: And I'm formulating my article as we speak. Where like
Speaker 1: on my property, I find that we could go out
Speaker 1: there right now, and I guarantee we could find flint flakes.
Speaker 1: I mean every time I walk out there and find
Speaker 1: flint flakes and there's no flint in in the area
Speaker 1: that I'm at. Mean, like in northwest Arkansas, right where
Speaker 1: I'm at, we've got sandstone and limestone. I mean that
Speaker 1: is right for what I know of there, that's all
Speaker 1: we have. They were getting their church and flint and
Speaker 1: stone materials from somewhere else, maybe not very far away.
Speaker 1: There's some places not very far away where they're getting it.
Speaker 1: But so when I see like pink rocks and white
Speaker 1: rocks and pick it up and it's that smooth, flinty church,
Speaker 1: I mean that is the evidence of percussion napping, Am
Speaker 1: I right? So where you find if you can find
Speaker 1: flint flakes, then you know that you're you're you're in
Speaker 1: the Ballpark. And I learned this just because I watched
Speaker 1: a guy nap samara heads, is that there's a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of refuse there is. I mean, like, so if
Speaker 1: you have one air to make one arahead, you would
Speaker 1: have a See. I think that's something that I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have known unless I had seen somebody do it. So
Speaker 1: these little flakes that you find indicate that they of
Speaker 1: Americans were here. They were working on stone tools, and
Speaker 1: so there's surely intact stone tools somewhere. They're there. And um,
Speaker 1: you know this this flint in church that you're talking about,
Speaker 1: you're right there. The ose aren't mountains just don't have
Speaker 1: um certain types of rocks that they have in southern
Speaker 1: Arkansas or out of Yellowstone Park. We we have sedimentary
Speaker 1: rock here. It's sandstone, it's limestone. It's not adequate for
Speaker 1: really any kind of tool that would be at rock
Speaker 1: would be That's exactly right. It's a sedimentary rock and
Speaker 1: it just gets compressed over time, and certain nodules of
Speaker 1: that would form within these layers of limestone and sandstone
Speaker 1: in the bluffs, and so that the white and metamorphic
Speaker 1: and probably so yes compressed by heat. You bet depressed
Speaker 1: by heat and just sheer weight of limestone. But but
Speaker 1: these you know, in the White River, the river has
Speaker 1: been cutting through these limestone bluffs for so long it
Speaker 1: exposes a lot of these nodules. They fall out and no,
Speaker 1: just fall out and roll around in the river for
Speaker 1: a long time. They get a river. It's a cortex.
Speaker 1: It's called a brownish color on the outside of the rock.
Speaker 1: But if you take that brock and you break it open,
Speaker 1: you don't know what you're gonna find. It may be
Speaker 1: black picking church, the most beautiful colored chirt you've ever seen.
Speaker 1: It may be some blue and white modeled looking pinter's shirt.
Speaker 1: And and some of these are really good at making
Speaker 1: by faces with because they retain a really sharp edge.
Speaker 1: Tell me what a byfaces before? Yeah, byface is kind
Speaker 1: of a generic term for any uh arrowhead projectile point
Speaker 1: double side, two sides, yet it's generally both sides of
Speaker 1: it are napped, and so they're they're working on one
Speaker 1: side and turning it over and making it too faced.
Speaker 1: Um so yep, by face reduction technology and and and
Speaker 1: that's what that's what you make are heads with. And
Speaker 1: and you know they had to find that kind of rock,
Speaker 1: and when they find a good source of it, they
Speaker 1: would go back to that source over and over and
Speaker 1: over again. And there are known quarry sites in you know,
Speaker 1: this area and all over the country, and they would
Speaker 1: have This was news to me just since in the
Speaker 1: last few years. But they wouldn't so if they were,
Speaker 1: if they were trading and getting this stuff from other places,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't carry a twenty five pounds stone back fifty
Speaker 1: miles to wherever they were going to nap it. But
Speaker 1: they would make what do you call it? What they
Speaker 1: would do, they would make up. What they would do
Speaker 1: is they take that rock and they knocked pieces out
Speaker 1: of it, and they probably would knock it down into
Speaker 1: a manageable, maybe hand sized piece of flint or church
Speaker 1: that they could put maybe put in a bag of
Speaker 1: some type and carry it with them. They would call
Speaker 1: that a quarry blank. It's a blank that they had
Speaker 1: quarried out of somewhere. And then when they so people
Speaker 1: find those a lot. I've got a nice blank. I
Speaker 1: feel like it's probably a blank. It's it's about that
Speaker 1: big big rounds of baseball, Yeah, about half an inch thick,
Speaker 1: fairly developed but still pretty rough. So it was probably
Speaker 1: a blank that somebody just lost it, yea. And and
Speaker 1: a lot of times they would take those blanks and
Speaker 1: they would try to work it down into a nice
Speaker 1: point of some type. And there may have been what
Speaker 1: they call a stack on there. There may have been
Speaker 1: a piece of rock inside that that they just couldn't
Speaker 1: get it knocked off their right and they finally just
Speaker 1: got mad and threw it down and said I'm move
Speaker 1: along to a different piece. So we find a lot
Speaker 1: of quarry blanks out here in in in my field too.
Speaker 1: And and sometimes they don't know why they lost it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you can tell they were having a hard time
Speaker 1: piece and working at particular piece got done with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, that's the interesting thing to think about, is
Speaker 1: why they all these how all these points got here.
Speaker 1: But yeah, some would have been broken while they were
Speaker 1: working on them. Someonel have been broken when they shot
Speaker 1: at something somewhere. Full pieces that just got lost somewhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess some we're most most assuredly
Speaker 1: buried with people, you know. Yeah, you said they used
Speaker 1: to do that. You bet they did. You know. Well, man,
Speaker 1: this has been uh fascinating. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: let me come out. I mean, I just met you today.
Speaker 1: We we talked, we spoke on the phone this last week. Uh,
Speaker 1: we had to come over here to buy a squirrel dog,
Speaker 1: which is high priority stuff for us. Yeah, we had
Speaker 1: to come over in this part of the world. And man,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad we connected. You did exactly what I
Speaker 1: wanted to do. I mean, if no one listens to
Speaker 1: this but me, I'll be happy, But uh, they will.
Speaker 1: This is this is really interesting stuff. And I think
Speaker 1: somebody could listen to this and have a really good picture.
Speaker 1: I know I have a much better picture of of
Speaker 1: of what was happening in the time periods and and
Speaker 1: the different even the dispersal of humans, the dispersal of technology.
Speaker 1: So anyway, well, thank you. I'm glad you came out.
Speaker 1: And it's it's always exciting to me to to to
Speaker 1: to see anybody that's interested in this. And you know,
Speaker 1: when you're passionate about something and you really like something,
Speaker 1: you you can't wait to talk about it with somebody.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad you came up today. And and maybe
Speaker 1: you can get your boys into this too, and yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, on a on a personal note, with this,
Speaker 1: this this hunting that we do has really brought my
Speaker 1: family together. It's getting that my is off their phones. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's getting them outside. We're seeing nature, we're walking, we're talking,
Speaker 1: We're interacting with each other. We're talking to each other.
Speaker 1: You know, this is a good thing. It's it's a
Speaker 1: good clean fund if you're doing it the right way
Speaker 1: and and really you know, you're you're learning a lot.
Speaker 1: It's a good thing. Yes, it really is. I mean
Speaker 1: we my boys have been super intrigued by finding these
Speaker 1: points in our front yard. Yeah, I mean, it just
Speaker 1: unlocks this. It's just this mystery, you know, these humans
Speaker 1: that lived here before us, that we're hunting critters on
Speaker 1: our land and camping the Uh you know, well it
Speaker 1: makes you really think is that our land at all?
Speaker 1: It's their land? Maybe. Yeah, we're just on it now,
Speaker 1: just just temporarily. Yeah, staying a r right now. And
Speaker 1: I'm glad to have you up. I hope to have
Speaker 1: you back at here sometimes if you want to come back,
Speaker 1: we'll find some marriage together. That sounds awesome. And hey,
Speaker 1: you just got me started. I mean, I'm we may
Speaker 1: do a follow up podcast one of these days with
Speaker 1: some more questions or hopefully get some skills today too,
Speaker 1: maybe show some people. So yes, I will. Well, so
Speaker 1: we'll put some we'll put some stills on our on
Speaker 1: our website. So on our website, we we'll have the
Speaker 1: podcast posted and and I will put some still photos
Speaker 1: of some of these points here in your library. Good
Speaker 1: doing there, for sure, good do. But hey, so this
Speaker 1: is the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. So we have a
Speaker 1: closing thing that I always say so, and it's keep
Speaker 1: the wild places wild, because that's where the bears live,
Speaker 1: and that's where the Native Americans lived and the shot
Speaker 1: bears and ston't project off points. Yeah, thank you, thank you,