WEBVTT - Ep 30: The Folsom Site - Killing Bison with Stone Points (Part 2) 0:00:05.400 --> 0:00:08.920 There were so many questions about the site that were unanswered. 0:00:09.280 --> 0:00:12.959 That's why I went back seventy years later. On this 0:00:13.039 --> 0:00:16.520 episode of the Bargaris podcast, we're going to the site 0:00:16.600 --> 0:00:20.479 of an ancient bison kill, the one found by George 0:00:20.520 --> 0:00:24.560 mcjuncan on Part one of the series. After George's death, 0:00:24.680 --> 0:00:27.880 it would become known as the Fulsome Site. It was 0:00:27.960 --> 0:00:31.639 here that stone tools made by humans were found with 0:00:31.720 --> 0:00:36.000 a relic form of Pleistocene bison and forever planted an 0:00:36.080 --> 0:00:40.920 indisputable data point into the debate of human antiquity in 0:00:41.000 --> 0:00:44.440 North America. We're gonna talk with Old Steve ronnella of 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:49.479 Meat Eater and the nation's leading expert on the Fulsome site, 0:00:49.760 --> 0:00:53.519 Dr David Meltzer. He literally wrote the book on Fulsome 0:00:53.840 --> 0:00:57.959 after he went back there seventy years after its initial 0:00:58.040 --> 0:01:02.400 excavation and excavator in it again to find more answers. 0:01:02.760 --> 0:01:07.480 So on this podcast, we're going back to Fulsome. I 0:01:07.680 --> 0:01:11.400 really doubt you're gonna want to miss this one. But first, 0:01:11.840 --> 0:01:15.840 I have an overarching question I'd like to present to you, 0:01:15.920 --> 0:01:19.920 and it's this, What is the relevance of this knowledge 0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:24.000 about these ancient people in their lives? Why do we care? 0:01:24.400 --> 0:01:28.320 Is it merely entertainment to try to understand them or 0:01:28.400 --> 0:01:32.280 is there more? I'm in search of the answer. These 0:01:32.319 --> 0:01:36.280 things were herded, driven into a box canyon and then 0:01:36.360 --> 0:01:39.040 just raindown spears. I don't even kill them. You can't 0:01:39.160 --> 0:01:42.320 make them go anywhere they don't want to go. We 0:01:42.319 --> 0:01:44.520 don't have to drive them in there. Oh we gotta 0:01:44.560 --> 0:01:46.520 do is wait until they go up in their own 0:01:46.600 --> 0:01:57.680 their own So I think it was an accident. My 0:01:57.800 --> 0:02:01.360 name is Clay Nukelem, and this is the Air Grease podcast, 0:02:01.600 --> 0:02:05.920 where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight 0:02:06.080 --> 0:02:09.720 and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of 0:02:09.760 --> 0:02:14.440 Americans who lived their lives close to the land. Presented 0:02:14.560 --> 0:02:19.520 by f HF gear, American made purpose built hunting and 0:02:19.560 --> 0:02:23.040 fishing gear as designed to be as rugged as the 0:02:23.040 --> 0:02:34.360 places we explore. Yeah, that's see, that's the only way 0:02:34.400 --> 0:02:37.800 that I need to get in here. I'm walking through 0:02:37.840 --> 0:02:42.079 a grassy meadow headed towards a small drainage. The clicking 0:02:42.200 --> 0:02:47.560 you're hearing is Kyle Bell's Spurs the wild Worth Royo. 0:02:48.240 --> 0:02:56.000 That's it. We're eleven miles west of Folsom, New Mexico, 0:02:56.200 --> 0:02:59.480 on the Crowfoot Ranch. The place we're headed to is 0:02:59.480 --> 0:03:03.680 where a Pleistocene hunters killed a cow calf herd of 0:03:03.800 --> 0:03:08.440 thirty two bison some ten thousand, three hundred years ago. 0:03:09.280 --> 0:03:13.440 Here they found the bison bone piles buried beneath ten 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:18.240 feet of earth and astonishingly roughly twenty stone points of 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:22.080 a design that had never been documented before. They called 0:03:22.120 --> 0:03:26.200 this place the fulsome sight. You'd walk right past it 0:03:26.280 --> 0:03:28.520 if you didn't know what you were looking for. It 0:03:28.560 --> 0:03:32.480 looks like every other place on this ranch, but something 0:03:32.639 --> 0:03:36.560 special happened here. This is the voice of the current 0:03:36.720 --> 0:03:42.760 manager of the Crowfoot Ranch, Seth. They had all those 0:03:42.840 --> 0:03:45.920 archaeologists come out, you know, from this different schools, and 0:03:46.320 --> 0:03:49.640 they did a dig twenty years ago, twenty plus, so 0:03:49.680 --> 0:03:52.120 all this disturbed dirt they they dug right in here. 0:03:52.280 --> 0:03:54.280 What I thought was ironic that they found was they 0:03:54.280 --> 0:03:56.640 said that they were being selective of meat. Have you 0:03:56.680 --> 0:03:58.200 heard that? Because they didn't have any of their lower 0:03:58.280 --> 0:04:00.400 jaw bones to them, so they thought they were eating 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:02.760 the tongues out of him. Yeah, really, and they were. 0:04:02.800 --> 0:04:05.600 They thought that was a delicacy. Here you're at the site. 0:04:06.000 --> 0:04:08.760 So when George found it, would it have been like 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:11.680 it had been like a fresh cut bank after a 0:04:11.720 --> 0:04:14.120 big floor. Yeah, I mean you look, you can come 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:17.159 up here and look at the erosion from it. Uh. 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:20.520 And I assumed that this this has probably eroded more since. 0:04:20.600 --> 0:04:24.560 But you see how steep it was in in that flood. 0:04:24.920 --> 0:04:26.960 You know, it probably took another two or three foot 0:04:27.040 --> 0:04:31.640 off the sides. And that's when he set found the bone. 0:04:33.200 --> 0:04:35.520 In part one of this series, we learned that the 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:38.680 site was discovered a nineteen o eight by freed slave 0:04:38.760 --> 0:04:42.839 named George mcjunkin. He was a self educated, self made 0:04:42.880 --> 0:04:45.960 man who became a renowned cowboy and the manager of 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:50.960 the Crowfoot Ranch. The site wasn't excavated by professional archaeologists 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:54.880 until after George's death, so he never knew the significance 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:58.680 of his discovery. In this podcast series, we're en route 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:01.760 to get a layman's pa h D on the fulsome site. 0:05:02.240 --> 0:05:05.800 You've heard Steve Ronella on Fair Greece before. He's a 0:05:05.839 --> 0:05:10.000 George Junkin junkie and has been forever fascinated by ice 0:05:10.120 --> 0:05:13.440 age hunters. In fact, he loved the bison hunters of 0:05:13.480 --> 0:05:15.919 the American planes so much he wrote a book called 0:05:15.960 --> 0:05:21.080 American Buffalo and he's been to the Fulsome site. Here's 0:05:21.120 --> 0:05:28.320 Steve of all the different really cool archaeological sites in America. 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:30.560 I think one of the best things about the Fulsome 0:05:30.600 --> 0:05:34.000 site is that the finding of it, like the circumstances 0:05:34.040 --> 0:05:37.719 of who found it and how with the flash flood 0:05:37.760 --> 0:05:42.040 and you know, everybody dying in this freed slave trying 0:05:42.080 --> 0:05:44.640 to convince people to come. Look, right, the finding of 0:05:44.680 --> 0:05:47.400 it's as cool as what happened. So it's like a 0:05:47.440 --> 0:05:50.800 double whammy. Finding it is way cooler than just some 0:05:51.000 --> 0:05:53.760 I mean no disrespect, but if some anthropologists had just 0:05:53.920 --> 0:05:57.560 found it whatever doing aerial mapping right, it wouldn't be 0:05:57.560 --> 0:05:59.479 half as cool as it is. The way that it 0:05:59.560 --> 0:06:01.960 was the sky, yeah, and the fact you go down 0:06:02.000 --> 0:06:04.679 there and the guy's buried not too far from the site, 0:06:04.839 --> 0:06:08.640 like McJunkins, it just drips of history. You know. Mcjonkans 0:06:08.680 --> 0:06:10.359 got a nice tombstone now, but he used to just 0:06:10.400 --> 0:06:12.600 have this crudi old tombstones and people pitched together and 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:14.839 made him a nice tombstone. I was standing there in 0:06:14.880 --> 0:06:17.919 the at Mcjonkins's grave with an archaeologist. Let's see these 0:06:17.960 --> 0:06:19.880 little bones laying on the ground, said what are all 0:06:19.920 --> 0:06:21.520 these bones. I picked one up. He said, that's a 0:06:21.600 --> 0:06:26.000 human finger bone because it had been ground squirrels and 0:06:26.000 --> 0:06:31.200 pray dogs whatever it Badgers over your cemetery, Yeah, every 0:06:31.480 --> 0:06:34.400 every you know, presidents make monuments all the time. If 0:06:34.480 --> 0:06:36.880 I was president, I would I would make it the 0:06:37.120 --> 0:06:42.039 George mcjunkin, not the Foalsome, the George mcjunkin National Monument, 0:06:42.040 --> 0:06:45.640 which would include the Falsome Site. Now, that would be 0:06:45.760 --> 0:06:50.640 something if Steve Ronella was president. To understand the significance 0:06:50.680 --> 0:06:53.480 of the Falsome Site. We've got to understand the quandary 0:06:53.680 --> 0:06:57.400 about human antiquity in North America that had been brewing 0:06:57.480 --> 0:07:01.960 for decades. Up to this point. Most people believe humans 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:06.680 have only been here for about three thousand years. I 0:07:06.720 --> 0:07:09.280 had mentioned how the Folsome site is doubly cool. It's 0:07:09.320 --> 0:07:12.360 cool because how was found and who founded the McJunkins story. 0:07:12.680 --> 0:07:15.200 It was cool because of what happened there, meaning some 0:07:15.280 --> 0:07:17.760 dudes during the Ice Age killed thirty some bison and 0:07:17.840 --> 0:07:22.400 a big pile with stone tools and hand thrown weaponry. 0:07:22.440 --> 0:07:25.600 That's cool. It's tripally cool because of what it did 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:29.400 to up end conventional thinking about what had gone on 0:07:29.440 --> 0:07:32.520 in the Western hemisphere. There's been a handful of occasions 0:07:32.600 --> 0:07:38.960 where human tools, like indisputably human creations in the form 0:07:39.040 --> 0:07:44.720 of projectile points were found mixed up with near in 0:07:44.880 --> 0:07:48.680 loose association with animals that we knew to be, like 0:07:48.760 --> 0:07:51.760 extinct Ice age animals. But the Ice Age was a 0:07:51.800 --> 0:07:55.720 long time ago. Here with the Folsome site, you got 0:07:55.880 --> 0:08:00.920 it stuck together. You got a projectile point in the rib, 0:08:01.280 --> 0:08:04.000 laying what they call in C. Two, laying in the 0:08:04.120 --> 0:08:08.640 rib of the thing. No rational reasonable person could come 0:08:08.720 --> 0:08:12.000 and make any argument that here's an Ice age relic, 0:08:12.280 --> 0:08:15.400 an animal that's not here now, that was killed and 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:19.560 butchered by human beings, And that proved once and for 0:08:19.600 --> 0:08:23.520 all that human antiquity in the New World went back 0:08:23.600 --> 0:08:29.760 a long way. I want to clarify that by quote 0:08:29.800 --> 0:08:33.040 in the rib, Steve means the point was laying in 0:08:33.160 --> 0:08:36.800 between two ribs. It wasn't stuck in a rib, but 0:08:37.160 --> 0:08:42.120 it was just as conclusive. We heard briefly from Dr 0:08:42.240 --> 0:08:46.240 David Meltzer on Part one. He's the national authority on 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:49.440 the Falsome site. And how would one know that, Well, 0:08:49.880 --> 0:08:53.880 he literally wrote a giant book called Falsome. It's basically 0:08:53.960 --> 0:08:58.000 a textbook on everything known about the place. Dr Meltzer 0:08:58.120 --> 0:09:01.720 isn't just a falsome expert, though. He's dedicated his academic 0:09:01.760 --> 0:09:05.360 career to the people of the Pleistocene era, which is 0:09:05.400 --> 0:09:08.439 a block of time that began a couple million years 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:13.040 ago and ended ten thousand years ago. The time period 0:09:13.160 --> 0:09:17.040 from then until now it is called the Holocene. We 0:09:17.160 --> 0:09:20.440 live in the Holocene. If you know these two words, 0:09:20.520 --> 0:09:24.000 Pleistocene and Holocene, you'll pretty much be in the loop 0:09:24.120 --> 0:09:27.839 for talking about the recent history of planet Earth. Dr 0:09:27.920 --> 0:09:31.479 Meltzer is the author of multiple books on the Pleistocene, 0:09:31.840 --> 0:09:36.800 including First People's in a New World, The Great Paleolithic War, 0:09:37.360 --> 0:09:41.800 and Search for the First Americans. I went to the 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:45.480 campus of s m U in Dallas, Texas, where he works. 0:09:45.960 --> 0:09:48.880 We'd hardly greeted each other when he asked me to 0:09:49.040 --> 0:09:52.480 follow him into his lab. It was full of bones 0:09:52.800 --> 0:10:00.920 and stone tools, ancient stuff. Skull that's been turned upside 0:10:00.920 --> 0:10:04.079 down because when we got it in the ground, it 0:10:04.200 --> 0:10:07.040 was top of the head facing up right. So we 0:10:07.160 --> 0:10:10.320 plastered it and then we cut underneath it, lifted it out, 0:10:10.800 --> 0:10:12.719 and so now what you see is the plaster. It's 0:10:12.760 --> 0:10:15.160 resting on its plaster cast and you can see the 0:10:15.200 --> 0:10:17.760 teeth in here. Wow. Right, And there's the back of 0:10:17.800 --> 0:10:21.360 the skull. So that is a bison antiquist skull from 0:10:21.400 --> 0:10:25.880 the full side, Yes, and it's a big It's pretty 0:10:25.880 --> 0:10:28.200 wild being in the same room with the skull of 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:30.760 a bison antiquous. If you want to see a cell 0:10:30.800 --> 0:10:33.200 phone video the skull, you can check out my instagram 0:10:33.280 --> 0:10:38.000 at clay Underscore Newcomb. Dr Meltzer is a unique guy 0:10:38.120 --> 0:10:42.040 when it comes to fulsome The site was originally excavated 0:10:42.040 --> 0:10:47.000 between nineteen and nineteen, but seventy years later there were 0:10:47.080 --> 0:10:51.199 unanswered questions that he knew our modern techniques and technology 0:10:51.240 --> 0:10:55.120 could now answer, primarily carbon dating, which we'll talk about 0:10:55.120 --> 0:10:58.520 more in Part three of this series. Like a dramatic 0:10:58.600 --> 0:11:02.600 movie sequel and night Team, Dr Meltzer and his team 0:11:02.600 --> 0:11:05.960 went back to Falsome. They dug up the place again 0:11:06.160 --> 0:11:11.240 with new questions about the site's geology, it's antiquity which 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:15.000 is the site's age, the paleo topography which is its 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:20.080 former geography, and its depositional history, which basically means the 0:11:20.160 --> 0:11:25.360 layers that covered the site. Here's Dr Meltzer talking about 0:11:25.440 --> 0:11:30.160 the uniqueness of the Falsome site for fifty years there 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:34.200 had been this very heated debate over how long people 0:11:34.240 --> 0:11:38.120 had been in the Americas, and all manner of contenders 0:11:38.120 --> 0:11:41.000 were put forward. This is evidence that people have been 0:11:41.040 --> 0:11:43.160 here since the place to see. This is evidence that 0:11:43.160 --> 0:11:45.600 people have been here for three hundred thousand years. Here's 0:11:45.600 --> 0:11:47.640 evidence that people have been here for three d fifty 0:11:47.640 --> 0:11:51.319 thousand years. But in each and every instance, those sites 0:11:51.679 --> 0:11:55.400 failed to prove what they were claimed to prove, and 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:59.440 they failed because of various reasons. Uh, the artifacts weren't 0:11:59.440 --> 0:12:03.199 actually artif tacks, the artifacts were not in the geological 0:12:03.240 --> 0:12:06.640 deposits that were said to be that old. Uh, the 0:12:06.760 --> 0:12:10.760 artifacts had rolled downhill and ended up next to ancient 0:12:10.920 --> 0:12:13.800 animal remains, but they were not necessarily in what we 0:12:13.840 --> 0:12:16.320 call primary context. That is to say, they didn't enter 0:12:16.320 --> 0:12:18.679 the deposit at the same time as those ancient animals 0:12:18.679 --> 0:12:21.720 that are the deposit. And so you had, you know, 0:12:22.040 --> 0:12:25.559 literally decades of people arguing back and forth over how 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:28.800 long people have been in the America's. When Folsom came along, 0:12:29.200 --> 0:12:32.640 it was just as advertised. What you had was a 0:12:32.679 --> 0:12:37.840 spot on the landscape where hunters had confronted and killed 0:12:38.200 --> 0:12:40.400 a herd of bison, we now know there were about 0:12:40.400 --> 0:12:43.920 thirty two animals that were dispatched that day and in 0:12:43.960 --> 0:12:48.760 the process left behind their artifacts in ways that made 0:12:48.760 --> 0:12:54.040 it absolutely clear that those animals and those people had 0:12:54.080 --> 0:12:57.000 been on that very landscape at the same moment in time. 0:12:57.480 --> 0:13:00.800 Because we had spear points what we know as falsome 0:13:00.840 --> 0:13:04.200 fluted points in direct association with the bones. And what 0:13:04.280 --> 0:13:07.040 I mean by that is we had a projectile point 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:10.720 in between ribs. Right, it had sat there since that 0:13:10.800 --> 0:13:14.000 animal was killed. Right, There was no question that that 0:13:14.000 --> 0:13:17.040 that that was some sort of adventitious association, that somehow 0:13:17.040 --> 0:13:19.760 a projectile point had worked its way down into the dirt, 0:13:19.800 --> 0:13:22.560 into the earth ten feet below the surface and ended 0:13:22.640 --> 0:13:26.040 up in between two bison ribs. No. No, that animal 0:13:26.120 --> 0:13:29.880 was stabbed by a human. And because that animal was 0:13:29.960 --> 0:13:33.400 a now extinct form of bison, which when extinct at 0:13:33.400 --> 0:13:36.520 the end of the Palistocene, that was the first absolutely 0:13:36.600 --> 0:13:40.400 definitive proof that people had been in the Americas at 0:13:40.440 --> 0:13:43.320 the end of the Palistocene. The only question remaining after 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:46.520 that was how much earlier might they have been? Right, 0:13:46.880 --> 0:13:49.920 But that's that's what made fulsome different. It was just 0:13:50.000 --> 0:13:55.040 as advertised. When you look back at the history of 0:13:55.280 --> 0:13:59.120 archaeology itself as a study. There was an incredible amount 0:13:59.120 --> 0:14:03.640 of drama and ego involved in the discussion of human antiquity. 0:14:03.920 --> 0:14:07.839 It was highly competitive regarding who discovered what and where. 0:14:08.360 --> 0:14:11.480 So it's hard to overstate how important to find was 0:14:11.679 --> 0:14:16.239 because it was so indisputable. Here's another component of understanding 0:14:16.320 --> 0:14:21.160 Falsome and archaeology that will help us. This is Steve 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:27.440 describing to us what is called a type site. A 0:14:27.480 --> 0:14:30.760 lot of bygone cultures will have a thing called the 0:14:30.800 --> 0:14:33.480 type site, and the type site is where they were identified. 0:14:33.560 --> 0:14:37.600 When we talk about Fulsome hunters, the Fulsome culture was 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:42.360 identified at wild Horse or Royal. You're Fulsome, New Mexico 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:45.280 was when it was first identified the identifying feature of 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:48.160 the Foalsome culture. I was calling Folsome homes and they 0:14:48.160 --> 0:14:51.120 took the name Falsome simply because that was the English 0:14:51.200 --> 0:14:54.240 name of the town. Sure, that was probably a brand 0:14:54.240 --> 0:14:57.240 new town. Has nothing to do as a descriptor of 0:14:57.280 --> 0:14:59.960 these people, not at all, and just to to keeping 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:02.240 in the same state, just at the same point, in 0:15:02.240 --> 0:15:04.800 the same state. When we talk about a Clovis hunter, 0:15:05.040 --> 0:15:10.120 it just so happens that the projectile points which stand 0:15:10.200 --> 0:15:15.640 for the hunters that made them were first identified near Clovis, 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:19.080 New Mexico. They were there over ten thousand years before 0:15:19.120 --> 0:15:23.200 anyone even thought to name to make it, we happen 0:15:23.240 --> 0:15:28.120 to right now be doing our conversation about Fulsome near Shadrin, Nebraska. 0:15:28.360 --> 0:15:30.840 Were you and I to walk out and find Holy 0:15:30.920 --> 0:15:34.320 Cow look at this insane projectile point, diagnostic unfound point, 0:15:34.360 --> 0:15:36.720 and then we realized it was this whole culture of people. 0:15:36.760 --> 0:15:38.800 And they made this point, they might wind up and 0:15:39.040 --> 0:15:41.400 call them the shattern Hunters. I think they'd call it 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:44.480 Ronella newcom Okay, But if they were consistent with the 0:15:44.560 --> 0:15:47.200 days of yore, that's what they would wind up naming them. 0:15:47.920 --> 0:15:51.560 Fulsome Hunters were identified near Fulsom, New Mexico, and so 0:15:51.600 --> 0:15:55.280 they just the name, the nearby town name was applied 0:15:55.480 --> 0:15:57.600 to the culture. We talk about a culture. We're talking 0:15:57.600 --> 0:16:01.520 about like what you imagine a culture of people. We 0:16:01.640 --> 0:16:04.600 know them when we see them based on the point 0:16:04.840 --> 0:16:08.240 with our understanding right now, it's the point. The point 0:16:08.520 --> 0:16:11.400 has to be present, The projectile point that they like 0:16:11.560 --> 0:16:14.800 to make has to be present, meaning if we know 0:16:14.880 --> 0:16:18.960 that the Fulsome culture was active eleven thousand, seven hundred 0:16:19.040 --> 0:16:21.920 years ago. If you went down to South Florida and 0:16:22.080 --> 0:16:25.960 found a human camp site from eleven thousand, seven hundred 0:16:26.040 --> 0:16:29.600 years ago that had a different projectile point, you wouldn't 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:33.200 call it a fulsome site. Okay, So it's not to when, Yeah, 0:16:33.280 --> 0:16:37.920 it's not when it's who and when it describes a culture, 0:16:38.000 --> 0:16:41.840 just like the culture of us to drive Chevrolet pickups 0:16:42.480 --> 0:16:45.320 and there's another culture in France that drives some other 0:16:45.400 --> 0:16:49.960 kind of pickup. The fulsome culture is identified by the 0:16:50.000 --> 0:16:53.560 type of technology they used when making stone points. But 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:58.400 this culture was also associated with something else, much bigger. 0:16:59.600 --> 0:17:05.280 They were highly associated with a relics form of bison 0:17:05.560 --> 0:17:08.320 called bison antiquis, not something that went extinct, probably a 0:17:08.400 --> 0:17:11.840 relic form of the animal that lives here now. It 0:17:11.920 --> 0:17:17.040 was bigger, different sort of horn configuration was a bigger 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:20.000 they call it like bison antiquis. They had a lot 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:23.719 of fidelity to a certain style of points. They had 0:17:23.720 --> 0:17:26.800 a lot seems to have a lot of fidelity to bison. 0:17:27.080 --> 0:17:30.359 And they lived on what is now the American Great Plains. 0:17:30.480 --> 0:17:32.800 That's where they're found. So you can find them in 0:17:33.280 --> 0:17:37.000 the Panhandle of Texas, you can find them in New Mexico. 0:17:37.280 --> 0:17:40.360 You can find them in Montana, you can find fulsome 0:17:40.359 --> 0:17:44.520 points in southern Saskatchewan, you can find them all the 0:17:44.560 --> 0:17:48.399 way in western Nebraska. But they stayed to the Great 0:17:48.440 --> 0:17:51.840 Plains where the most of the plains Buffalo were. Yeah, 0:17:51.920 --> 0:17:55.479 and at the time it was probably cooler and wetter, 0:17:55.720 --> 0:17:58.480 but it was an open grassland, and it was just 0:17:58.680 --> 0:18:02.680 going by how few fulsome sites there are and how 0:18:02.720 --> 0:18:05.639 widely dispersed they are, and kind of the sort of 0:18:05.680 --> 0:18:09.920 the imprint of those people, it was probably insanely low 0:18:10.000 --> 0:18:12.680 population densities. I can't tell no one, no one can 0:18:12.680 --> 0:18:16.600 say this for real, but I've run this by professional anthropologists. 0:18:16.720 --> 0:18:21.040 It's not unreasonable to think that a band of these hunters, 0:18:21.320 --> 0:18:25.120 which would be an extended family group, that these bands 0:18:25.160 --> 0:18:27.960 of people, it makes sense that they were maybe you know, 0:18:28.000 --> 0:18:31.359 they maybe didn't exceed ten or twenty individuals. It's not 0:18:31.560 --> 0:18:36.080 unreasonable to imagine that they could go a generation without 0:18:36.400 --> 0:18:40.200 encountering individuals that you're not immediately related to. It seems 0:18:40.480 --> 0:18:47.359 very few people occupying that landscape at that time. Take 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:51.240 a minute and imagine the North American continent ten thousand, 0:18:51.400 --> 0:18:56.240 three hundred years ago with human populations that scarce. By 0:18:56.280 --> 0:19:00.879 the time Europeans arrived here roughly ten thousand years after 0:19:00.960 --> 0:19:04.159 the Falsome Bison kill, which would be about six hundred 0:19:04.160 --> 0:19:07.320 plus years from the present. Backwards from the present, the 0:19:07.359 --> 0:19:10.960 place was basically like an urban center crawling with people. 0:19:11.320 --> 0:19:14.080 The civilization of the American Indians was in full swing 0:19:14.119 --> 0:19:17.840 and highly developed compared to when the Falsome Hunters were here. 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:23.040 Some American Indians are undoubtedly the descendants of the Folsome 0:19:23.119 --> 0:19:27.840 Hunters wildly, though, of all the things these fulsome hunters 0:19:27.920 --> 0:19:31.640 used in life, there is one thing that has outlasted 0:19:31.800 --> 0:19:35.960 the rigor of time that we infer an incredible amount 0:19:36.080 --> 0:19:39.439 of data from. One of the things I like about 0:19:39.680 --> 0:19:42.240 the projectile point sin It's made of stone and it 0:19:42.359 --> 0:19:45.680 lasts long time, so it winds up being Some people 0:19:45.720 --> 0:19:48.680 that aren't into what we'd call Indian arrowheads sometimes don't 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:51.600 get the fascination with it. But wait to think about it. 0:19:51.800 --> 0:19:54.639 It's not so much that it's the arrowhead. It's just 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:59.320 a It's it's a a piece of something that survived, 0:19:59.560 --> 0:20:03.399 sometimes in a perfect state, from the time they handled it. 0:20:03.560 --> 0:20:08.160 Their bones are gone to large measure, their homes and structures, 0:20:08.440 --> 0:20:12.080 the things they wore the wood that they employed. I'd 0:20:12.119 --> 0:20:14.880 be as excited to find a spear shaft, but they're 0:20:14.880 --> 0:20:16.800 not laying around. It's like, but here's this thing that 0:20:16.920 --> 0:20:19.360 like that. A guy can drop that thing and it's 0:20:19.359 --> 0:20:22.240 gonna sit there for twelve years. What other thing can 0:20:22.280 --> 0:20:24.640 you drop on the ground. We talked about how long 0:20:24.680 --> 0:20:27.480 our stuff lasts, right, like how long plastic last? You said, 0:20:27.480 --> 0:20:30.000 a plastic bottle on the ground for twelve thousand years. 0:20:30.040 --> 0:20:31.720 To come back and look at there might be something, 0:20:31.720 --> 0:20:38.520 but they look like a volsible. Imagine archaeologists ten thousand 0:20:38.680 --> 0:20:42.040 years from now, Well, I doubt this place will be around. 0:20:42.560 --> 0:20:46.800 But them taking just one of your material possessions and 0:20:46.880 --> 0:20:52.320 making vast inferences about your entire life from it, I 0:20:52.320 --> 0:20:55.960 wonder what they'd say. I had some questions about how 0:20:56.000 --> 0:21:00.560 an archaeological site is verified, so it's legitimacy is known. 0:21:00.840 --> 0:21:03.240 I think it's important for us to understand the bigger 0:21:03.280 --> 0:21:06.919 picture of what's happening here beyond some dudes digging up 0:21:06.960 --> 0:21:11.560 bones and finding stone points que the Randy Travis song. 0:21:12.200 --> 0:21:15.840 It's a pretty complex world, and there were many missteps 0:21:15.880 --> 0:21:19.959 in early archaeology and in the original excavation of the 0:21:20.000 --> 0:21:26.240 fulsome site that almost disqualified it. So from an archaeological process, 0:21:26.640 --> 0:21:30.600 there's a prescribed way that a site should be excavated 0:21:30.640 --> 0:21:34.080 and understood. As I understand that there were other sites 0:21:34.280 --> 0:21:38.400 in Texas and Nebraska and maybe even in Kansas that 0:21:38.520 --> 0:21:44.240 potentially had similar type evidence of humans and these older 0:21:44.280 --> 0:21:46.679 animals that are now extinct, but they were mishandled and 0:21:46.720 --> 0:21:49.000 so they have to be It's it's like evidence coming 0:21:49.040 --> 0:21:51.320 into a courtroom that was acquired the wrong way and 0:21:51.320 --> 0:21:54.680 the judge goes, I can't use this. That's exactly how 0:21:54.720 --> 0:21:56.720 it played out. But we also need to put a 0:21:56.760 --> 0:22:00.920 little bit of historical context here. This is the eighteen nineties, 0:22:01.040 --> 0:22:06.120 early nineteen hundreds, the teens. There weren't clear cut methods 0:22:06.320 --> 0:22:09.239 for field excavation. A lot of these excavations were not 0:22:09.280 --> 0:22:11.840 conducted by you know, what we would now recognize as 0:22:11.880 --> 0:22:15.480 sort of professional scientists, professional archaeologist, professional geologists, and they 0:22:15.520 --> 0:22:17.119 didn't know what they were doing is really what it 0:22:17.240 --> 0:22:20.000 came down to. So, you know, we had this site 0:22:20.000 --> 0:22:23.240 out in Frederick, Oklahoma, where it was a growl quarry, 0:22:23.359 --> 0:22:25.240 and you know, the folks who were working the gravel 0:22:25.320 --> 0:22:28.720 quarry said, oh yeah, we've got artifacts associated with mammoth bones. Well, 0:22:28.960 --> 0:22:31.359 you know, it requires a certain amount of expertise to 0:22:31.400 --> 0:22:35.080 sort of really be able to in an excavation. No, okay, 0:22:35.119 --> 0:22:37.640 these are deposits of a certain age. These are things 0:22:37.680 --> 0:22:40.120 that are associated with those deposits. We know that they 0:22:40.160 --> 0:22:44.199 belong in those deposits. And so because there were not 0:22:44.280 --> 0:22:48.040 agreed upon field techniques and clear cut field techniques at 0:22:48.040 --> 0:22:50.760 the time, and because some of these discoveries were made 0:22:50.800 --> 0:22:53.840 by folks who really didn't understand what they were seeing 0:22:53.800 --> 0:22:57.680 an exactly, well, yeah, they weren't even archaeologists, you know. 0:22:57.720 --> 0:23:00.560 They're the guys that work at the quarry. Yeah. Uh, 0:23:00.600 --> 0:23:02.000 and they're just you know, their job is just to 0:23:02.000 --> 0:23:04.199 shovel that stuff out of the way. Okay. So you 0:23:04.240 --> 0:23:06.880 find an artifact in the in the spoil pile over here, 0:23:06.880 --> 0:23:08.920 and you find some bones in the spoiled pile over there, 0:23:09.000 --> 0:23:10.959 that doesn't mean that you know, that artifact and that 0:23:11.000 --> 0:23:14.080 bone were associated back you know, twenty thousand years ago, 0:23:14.200 --> 0:23:18.800 fifteen thousand years ago. In retrospect, a couple of those sites, 0:23:18.920 --> 0:23:22.480 not the one in Frederick, but one out in Colorado City, Texas. 0:23:23.080 --> 0:23:27.480 Um in retrospect, we looked at the artifacts and we said, well, 0:23:27.480 --> 0:23:30.840 you know what, there is a possibility those artifacts could 0:23:30.840 --> 0:23:33.359 have been associated with that bison. But the problem was 0:23:33.440 --> 0:23:36.480 in and this is a few years before folsome the 0:23:36.480 --> 0:23:40.199 bison was being excavated by a fella who was just 0:23:40.280 --> 0:23:42.720 a local guy. Uh. He had discovered this bison in 0:23:42.720 --> 0:23:44.680 this creek bed and he wrote to the museum and said, 0:23:44.800 --> 0:23:47.640 you guys wanted so the folks folks in Denver said yeah, 0:23:47.640 --> 0:23:50.320 we'd really like to have that bison skeleton. And they 0:23:50.320 --> 0:23:52.760 gave him instructions on how to get it out of 0:23:52.800 --> 0:23:55.560 the ground, plaster it and put it into crates and 0:23:55.600 --> 0:23:58.119 ship it up to Denver. He excavates the bison, he 0:23:58.200 --> 0:24:00.439 plasters it up, he puts it into a crate. And 0:24:00.440 --> 0:24:02.359 the crate had been you know the folks in Denver 0:24:02.400 --> 0:24:04.080 and said, make a crate. You know this big by 0:24:04.080 --> 0:24:06.080 this big, by this big. And so he had this 0:24:06.160 --> 0:24:09.280 giant plastered bison, couldn't fit it into a crate. Instead 0:24:09.320 --> 0:24:12.040 of building a bigger crate, he simply knocked off chunks 0:24:12.040 --> 0:24:15.240 of the bone shoved it in there. So this was 0:24:15.280 --> 0:24:19.200 not done well right, And even though they found artifacts 0:24:19.200 --> 0:24:21.520 with the bison, they didn't realize that that was of 0:24:21.600 --> 0:24:24.919 interest or significance, and so they just ignored them. And 0:24:24.960 --> 0:24:27.560 it was only after the fact somebody was visiting Denver 0:24:27.640 --> 0:24:30.000 and said, hey, you know, I'd watched your guys excavate 0:24:30.040 --> 0:24:31.920