WHO WERE THE FIRST AMERICANS?

The Real Jurassic Park: Dinosaur National Monument by MARY ROACH Enter the Dragon: Visiting Komodo by BRENDAN BORRELL The Origin of Origin: Darwin's House by REBECCA STOTT

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firm the earlier work, and if we're lucky, For much of its length~ the slow- we'll find some more artifacts." Waters's team, led by Texas A&M moving Aucilla River in northern flows underground, tun­ underwater archaeologist J essi Halli­ gan, worked at the Page-Ladson sink, neling through bedrock limestone. But here and there it surfaces, named for Buddy Page, who discovered and preserved in those inky ponds lie secrets ofthe ftrst Americans. it, and John Ladson, the property's owner. The sink lies 30 feet below the 11 For years adventurous divers had hunted fossils and artifacts in opaque surface of the Aucilla, which, the sinkholes ofthe Aucilla about an hour east ofTallahassee. They following heavy rains, was dyed nearly black by humus from the hardwood found stone arrowheads and the bones of extinct mammals such hammock. Fish were jumping in the as , and the American ice age horse. water, while birds, tu1tles and the oc­ casional gator patrolled nearby. Were Then, in the 1980s, archaeologists from now the sinkhole is getting a fresh look, it not for Halligan's divers, there would the Florida Museum of Natural His­ along with several other provocative be no human presence and the silence tory opened a formal excavation in one archaeological sites that show evidence would be absolute. particular sink. Below a layer of undis­ of an earlier human presence in the Underwater archaeological sites turbed sediment they found nine stone , perhaps much earlier. are staked out and marked in meter­ flakes that a person must have chipped Which is why I found myself on the square quadrants, just like open-air from a larger stone, most likely to make banks ofthe Aucilla with Michael Wa­ excavations. The mud, troweled away tools and projectile points. They also ters, director ofthe Center for the Study by one diver, was fed into the mouth found a mastodon tusk, scarred by cir­ of the First Americans at Texas A&M of a four-inch suction dredge held by cular cut marks from a knife. The tusk University. A tall, unassuming 57-year­ a second diver. The dredge discharged was 14,500 years old. old, with an easy confidence honed dur­ into a pair of mesh screens mounted The age was surprising, even shock­ ing more than 30 years in the field, he on a skiff moored in midstream. Big ing, for it suddenly made the Aucilla had organized archaeologists and pieces- stones, bones, leaves and per­ sinkhole one of the earliest places in divers to gather more evidence of the haps human artifacts-collected on the Americas to betray the presence of sinkhole's role in prehistory. "This site the top screen, a quarter-inch mesh, human beings. Curiously, though, is as old as anything in ," and the small stuff was caught by the scholars largely ignored the discoveries Waters said. "The context is fine, and sixteenth-inch mesh below. ofthe Aucilia River Prehistory Project, the dating is fine, but people just looked First the researchers had to clear the instead clinging to the conviction that at it and said, 'Hmm, that's interesting,' site ofthe detritus that had accumu­ America's earliest settlers arrived more and that was it. It had a lot ofpotential , lated in the 15 years since the first ex­ recently, some 13,500 years ago. But but it was in limbo. We're here to con- cavation ended. Then, to reach the most

February 2013 SMITHSONIAN.COM 39 promising level, divers removed a ten­ Australia, displacing or absorbing N e­ land bridges for trekkers coming foot layer of clay that overlay it. The anderthals and other archaic hominid across the Bering Strait. work was tedious-''like diving in dark species. That diaspora took about For decades the most compelling ev­ roast coffee," said James Dunbar, an ar­ 70,000 years, and when it was com­ idence ofthi s standard view consisted chaeologist and member ofthe original pleted our ancestors stood triumphant. of distinctive, exquisitely crafted, Aucilla team who'd returned for a sec­ The peopling ofthe Americas, schol­ grooved bifacial projectile points, called ond look-but the blanket of sediment ars tend to agree, happened sometime "Clovis points" after the New Mexico guaranteed the site's integrity. Every­ in the past 25,000 years. In what might town near where they were first dis­ thing below the sediment was as old as be called the standard view of events, covered in 1929. With the aid of radio­ the people who left it there. In the oxy­ a wave ofbig game hunters crossed into carbon dating in the 1950s, archaeolo­ gen-deprived deposits within the Au­ the New World from at the end gists determined that the Clovis sites cilia mud, nothing decays. of the last ice age, when the Bering were 13,500 years old. This came as lit­ Working in the Stygian gloom with Strait was a land bridge that had tle surprise, for the first Clovis points lamps and suction pumps, the divers emerged after glaciers and continental were found in ancient campsites along unearthed a number of small bone ice sheets froze enough of the world's with the remains of mammoth and ice fragments, the fist-size vertebra of a water to lower sea level as much as 400 age bison, creatures that researchers large mammal and a manhole cover­ feet below what it is today. knew had died out thousands of years size shoulder blade that might have The key question is precisely when ago. But the discovery dramatically un­ dermined the prevailing wisdom that human beings and these ice age "megafauna" did not exist in America at the same time. Scholars flocked to New Mexico to see for themselves. The idea that the Clovis people, as they came to be known, were the first Americans quickly won over the re­ search community. "The evidence was unequivocal," said Ted Goebel, a col­ league ofWaters at the Center for the Study of the First Americans. Clovis sites, it turned out, were spread all over the continent, and "there was a clear association of the fauna with hun­ dreds, if not thousands, of artifacts," Goebel said. "Again and again it was the full picture." Furthermore, the earliest Clovis belonged to the same mastodon whose Archaeologist Michael Waters (above: in dates corresponded roughly to the right tusk bore the cut marks ofthe ancient Tennessee) challenges the idea that the geological moment-after the ice age Clovis people (opposite: a hunters. Also recovered in the fine­ from Colorado 12,000 to 14,000 years warming, before the great cold snap. mesh screen were many pounds of old) were the first in the Americas. The northern ice had receded far mastodon digesta, the remains ofveg­ enough so incoming settlers could curl etation that the six-ton beast ground the migration occurred. To be sure, around to the eastern slope of North to a mulch-like texture and swallowed. there were constraints imposed by America's coastal mountains and hike The observations the researchers North America's glacial history. Re­ south along an ice-free corridor be­ made in their days at the sinkhole val­ searchers suggest that it happened tween the cordilleran mountain glaciers idated the original excavation. (And sometime after gradual warming be­ to the west and the huge Laurentide ice on a subsequent expedition they gan 25,000 years ago during the depths sheet that swaddled much of Canada to found more mastodon bones.) Each of the ice age, but well before a severe the east. ''It was a very nice package, and new discovery generated fresh enthu­ cold snap reversed the trend 12,900 that's what sealed the deal," Goebel said. siasm. "All we need now," said Halli­ years ago. Early in this window, when "Clovis as the first Americans became gan, "are more human artifacts." the weather was very cold, migration the standard, and it's really a high bar." by boat was more likely because im­ When they reached the temperate About 100,000 years ago, modem hu­ mense expanses of ice would have prairies, the migrants found an envi­ man beings started spreading out from turned an overland journey into a ronment far different from what we their initial homeland in Africa to oc­ nightmarish ordeal. Later, however, know today-both fantastic and t er­ cupy Europe, Asia and, by sea, even the ice receded, opening up plausible rifying. There were ,

40 sw-HSONIAN.COM 1 "et>r-=- :_ 3

, giant sloths, camels, bi­ son, lions, saber-toothed cats, chee­ tahs, dire wolves weighing 150 pounds, eight-foot beavers and short­ faced bears that stood more than six feet tall on all fours and weighed 1,800 pounds. Clovis points, finely made and strong, were well suited for hunting large animals. The hunters spread through the and Mexico, the story went, pursuing prey until too few ani­ mals remained to support them in the last cold snap. Radiocarbon dates show that most of the megafauna be­ came extinct around 12,700 years ago. The Clovis points disappeared then as well, perhaps because there were no longer any large animals to hunt. The Clovis theory, over t ime, ac­ quired the force of dogma. "We all learned it as undergraduates," Waters recalled. Any artifacts that scholars said came before Clovis, or competing theories that cast doubt on the Clo­ vis-first idea, were ridiculed by the ar­ chaeological establishment, discred­ ited as bad science or ignored. Take South America. In the late .. 1970s, the U.S. archaeologist Tom D. • Dillehay and his Chilean colleagues be­ gan excavating what appeared to be an ancient settlement on a creek bank at Monte Verde, in southern Chile. Radio­ carbon readings on organic material col­ lected from the ruins ofa large tent-like structure showed that the site was 14,800 years old, predating Clovis finds by more than 1,000 years. The 50-foot­ long main structure, made ofwood with a hide roof, was divided into what ap­ peared to be individual spaces, each Clues to the peopling ofthe Americas was invited to meetings, speakers with a separate hearth. Outside was a have come from many archaeological stood up to denounce Monte Verde. sites. Top to bottom: Oregon's Paisley second, wishbone-shaped structure that Caves, recent source of ancient human "It's not fun when people write to your apparently contained medicinal plants. DNA; , ; Page-Ladson dean and try to get you fired," he re­ Mastodons were butchered nearby. The lagoon on the Aucilla River, Florida; once called. "And then your grad students controversial Monte Verde, Chile. excavators found cordage, stone chop­ try to get jobs and they can't get jobs." pers and augers and wooden planks There must have been "people The Monte Verde site gained wider preserved in the bog, along with plant somewhere in the Americas 15,000 or acceptance after a panel ofwell-known remains, edible seeds and traces ofwild 16,000 years ago, or perhaps as long as archaeologists visited it in 1997 and potatoes. Significantly, though, the re­ 18,000 years ago," said Dillehay, now reached a consensus. Dillehay was searchers found no Clovis points. That at Vanderbilt University. pleased that the panel had verified the posed a challenge: either Clovis hunters Of the researchers working sites integrity ofhis team's work, "but it was went to South America without their that seemed to precede Clovis people, a small group ofpeop le;· he said, mean­ trademark weapons (highly unlikely) Dillehay was singled out for special ing others in the profession continued or people settled in South America criticism. He was all but ostracized by to harbor doubts. even before the Clovis people arrived. Clovis advocates for years. When he Two years later, an independent ar-

42 SMITHSONIAN.COM I February 2013 e Cactus Hill, VA More than 15,000 years ago

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chaeologist, Stuart Fiedel, denounced Most analyses of conte mporary and lished on Monte Verde, which is five Monte Verde's authenticity in Scien­ ancient human DNA suggest that times more than were ever written on America's first immigra nts came from tific American Discovering Archaeol­ Asia. They traveled ove r a land bridge any other site in the Americas, includ­ ogy. Dillehay "fails to provide even the or along the coast. An alternative theory ing Clovis. All of the artifacts came most basic" information about the lo­ is t hat members of Europe's from the same surface covered by the culture voyaged to the East Coast. cations of "key artifacts" at Monte peat bog and they all made sense in Verde, Fiedel wrote. "Unless and until artifact s, and no flakes," he said of terms of the site's activities. The vast numerous discrepancies in the final re­ Monte Verde, citing some of Fiedel's majority are flaked pebble tools, typ­ port are convincingly clarified, this site arguments. "There are a lot of things ical of South American unifacial should not be construed as conclusive that have been interpreted as artifacts technologies. North Americans im­ proof of a pre-Clovis occupation in but don't look like them. Many of the pose their evaluations on South South America." things may not be the same age, be­ America without even knowing the The skepticism lingers. Gary cause it is difficult to know exactly data down south." He went on, "Now Haynes, a University of Nevada-Reno where they were found in the site." the field has moved on, and there are anthropologist and a Clovis advocate, Dillehay rebuffs the criticisms: numerous pre-Clovis sites that have is not convinced. "There are only a few "More than 1,500 pages were pub- come to the forefront."

MAP BY 5W INFOGRAP>iiCS February 2013 I SMIT HSONIAN.COM 43 firmed that age estimate date, and DNA analysis showed that the was mastodon bone. Deploying AMS technology, Waters and Stafford also retested many known Clovis samples from around the country, some collected decades earlier. The results, Waters said, "blew me away." Instead of a culture spanning about 700 years, the analysis shrunk the Clovis window to 13,100 to 12,800 years ago. This new time frame required the Siber­ ian hunters to negotiate the ice-free cor­ ridor, settle two continents and put the megafauna on the road to extinction within 300 years, an incredible feat. "Not possible;' Waters said. "You've got people in South America at the same time as Clovis, and the only way they could have gotten down there that fast is if they transported like 'Star Trek'" But Haynes, of the University of Nevada-Reno, disagrees. "Think of a small number of very mobile people covering a lot of ground," he suggests. "They could have been walking thou­ sands ofkilometers per year." Goebel, ofthe Texas A&M Center for the Study of the First Americans, char­ acterizes his attitude toward pre-Clovis finds as "acceptance with reservation." He said he's disturbed by "nagging" shortcomings. Each of the older sites appears to be one-of-a-kind, he said, At the Early hunters (bottom left: Clovis points, without a "demonstrated pattern across archaeological site north of Austin, New Mexico) pursued mastodons: At a region." With Clovis, he adds, it is clear Monte Verde, Chile, a tusk served as a Texas, in a layer of earth beneath a gouge (top left) and ribs were fire pokers that the original sites were part ofsome­ known Clovis excavation, researchers (bottom right); a mastodon tooth and thing bigger. The absence ofa consistent led by Waters over the past several vertebra, Tennessee (top right). pre-Clovis pattern "is one of the things years found 15,528 pre-Clovis arti­ that has hung up a lot of people, includ­ facts-most ofthem toolmaking chert Waters recently landed other blows ing myself." flakes, but also 56 chert tools. Using to the Clovis orthodoxy in collaboration optically stimulated luminescence, a with Thomas Stafford, president ofthe The discovery of numerous artifacts technique that analyzes light energy Colorado-based Stafford Research that pre-date Clovis has, over the years, trapped in sediment particles to iden­ Laboratories. In one series ofexper i­ required scholars to come up with dif­ tify the last time the soil was exposed to ments using accelerator mass spec­ ferent ideas about not only when peo­ sunlight, they found that the oldest arti­ trometry (AMS), a dating technique ple arrived in the Americas but how facts dated to 15,500 years ago-some that is more precise than earlier radio­ they got here. For instance, ifth ey were 2,000 years older than Clovis. The work carbon measurements, they reanalyzed already established 14,800 years ago, "confirms the emerging view that peo­ a mastodon rib from a skeleton previ­ they must not have used the famed ice­ ple occupied the Americas before Clo­ ously recovered in Manis, Washington, free corridor through North America: vis," the researchers concluded in and found to have a projectile point Researchers say that it would not Science in 2011. In Waters' view, the lodged in it. The original radiocarbon appear for another 1,000 years. people who made the oldest artifacts tests had surrounded the discovery in Maybe the first Americans didn't were experimenting with stone tech­ controversy because they showed it to walk here but came in small boats and nology that, over time, may have devel­ be 13,800 years old-centuries older followed the coastline, some re­ oped further into Clovis-style tools. than Clovis. The new AMS tests con- searchers say. That possibility was

44 SMITHSONIAN.COM I February 2013 See for Yourself Five places to encounter fossils and other evidence of the continent's original settlers

BLACKWATER DRAW NATIONAL HISTORIC LANDMARK NEW MEXICO In 1929, in a dry lake bed near Clovis, New Mexico, a young outdoorsman named Ridgely Whiteman came across unusual, fluted projectile points-the first evidence of a 13,000-year-old Paleo-Indian culture. Archaeologists soon followed, piecing together an account ofthe Clovis people, long believed to be the first to settle in the Americas. Today Eastern New Mexico University in Portales maintains the iconic Clovis complex at Blackwater Draw. A one-mile walking trail explores the lake bed and an old excavation. The university also has a small museum On a cliffside in western Pennsylvania, a 2007 structure on its campus 12 miles away, with artifacts and bones of the protects the c. 16,000-year-old Meadowcroft Rock Shelter. giant mammal "megafauna"-bison, mammoth, ground sloths and camels-hunted by the Clovis settlers. MASTODON STATE HISTORIC SITE IMPERIAL, MISSOURI The museum is open year-round. The field site is open The first ancient animal bones were found near the town of April through October. Kimmswick, Missouri, early in the 19th century, and the www.enmu.edu/services/museums/blackwater-draw/ riverbed site was picked over by amateurs for more than 150 index.shtml years before Russell Graham ofthe Illinois State Museum began digging there in 1979. About ten feet below the surface MEADOWCROFT ROCK SHELTER Graham uncovered a Clovis projectile point and the remains AVELLA, PENNSYLVANIA of a mastodon, clear evidence that early Americans had A local property owner discovered this site in 1955 but hunted these elephant-like creatures. kept a lid on it until1973, when University of Pittsburgh At the museum, find Clovis artifacts and the bones of archaeologists led by James Adovasio began to excavate. mastodon, bison, short-faced bear and other large ice age They found artifacts about 3,000 years older than those mammals. A movie highlights the debate over how human at Clovis, sparking a great academic controversy. hunting and climate change may have contributed to the Meadowcroft, 35 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, is now a extinction of these megafauna. A walking trail through a National Historic Landmark run by the Senator John Heinz portion of the 418-acre site takes visitors to the bone bed, History Center in Pittsburgh, a Smithsonian affiliate. Dug but the bed has been covered with plastic and back-filled to from a cliffface 45 feet above Cross Creek, the rock shelter make sure it remains undisturbed until excavations-still was once largely inaccessible. Now there are tours, and a incomplete-resume. Open year-round. stairway climbs the hillside to a 2007 building that protects http://mostateparks.com/park/mastodon-state-historic-site the original site and areas still to be excavated. A visitor center offers exhibits. Open May through October. MURRAY SPRINGS PALEO-INDIAN SITE www.heinzhistorycenter.org/meadowcroft.aspx SIERRA VISTA, ARIZONA This remote attraction in the eastern Arizona desert on the LUBBOCK LAKE LANDMARK TEXAS Mexico border is part of the San Pedro Riparian National This meander of a Brazos River tributary on the northern Conservation Area administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land outskirts ofLubbock, Texas, yielded, in the 1950s, the first Management. Since the 1960s, archaeologists working here radiocarbon dated Paleo-Indian material, a burned 9,800- have uncovered thousands of stone artifacts and large year-old bison bone. mammal bones from the Pleistocene era 12,000 to 13,000 The Lubbock Lake site and visitor center, on the years ago-the largest Clovis cache in the Southwest. southeastern edge ofthe Staked Plains, are operated by Texas Researchers say it was a butchering site. Today the Murray Tech University in Lubbock. Hiking trails range from 1/2 mile to Springs dig can be reached by a short but rugged walking 31/2 miles. Exhibits chronicle Lubbock Lake's evolution from a trail. The site does not have exhibits or a museum. Consider fast-moving streambed during the Clovis era, to ponds, then to stopping in Sierra Vista to check in with the Friends of the marsh. The Museum ofTexas Tech also exhibits artifacts from San Pedro River, a volunteer organization that leads hikes the archaeology site. Open year-round. to Murray Springs. Bring your own water. Open year-round. www.depts.ttu.edu/museumttu/111/visitus.html www.blm.gov/az/st/en/prog/cu/tural/murray.html

February 2013 I SMITHSONIAN.OOM 45 first suggested in the 1950s with the discovery of Clovis-era human bones­ but no artifacts-on Santa Rosa Island in the Santa Barbara Channel off the California coast. Over the past decade, though, a joint University of Oregon­ Smithsonian team of archaeologists unearthed dozens of stemmed and barbed projectile points from Santa Rosa and other Channel Islands, along with the remains of fish, shellfish, seabirds and seals. Radiocarbon dates showed much of the organic material was about 12,000 years old, roughly within the Clovis time frame. The findings do not prove that the continent's first settlers came by sea, of course. The islands were only about four miles offshore at the time, and could have been visited by people who'd settled on the mainland. Still, the sites establish that these island dwellers were seafarers of a sort and accus­ tomed to a seafood diet. Jon Erlandson, a University of Oregon stems of different shapes that attach Dennis Stanford (on the Chesapeake archaeologist, and Torben Rick, an an­ the projectile points to or darts, Bay) argues that Europeans in boats skirted the ice to America (a bove right: a thropologist at the Smithsonian Na­ they were prevalent in the Pacific laser in his lab probes a projectile point). tional Museum of Natural History, Northwest and the Great Basin. And propose a pre-Clovis "kelp highway" for they do not have the fluting character­ petrified feces-extracting carbon coast-hugging seamen skirting the istic of Clovis. Those observations residue from the organic material di­ southern edge of the Bering land bridge strengthen the view that other tool­ gested long ago. They also analyzed hu­ on their way from northeast Asia to the making human cultures were present man mitochondrial DNA in the sample, New World. "People came between in the Americas at the same time as probably shed from the intestinal wall, 15,000 and 16,000 years ago" by sea, and the Clovis people, and in all likelihood and determined that it came from a "could eat the same seaweed and seafood beforehand as well. modern human with an apparently as they moved along the coastline in The link between the Channel Is­ Asian genome. The toolmakers had boats," Erlandson said. "It seems logical." lands artifacts and the western lived 13,000 years ago. The notion that ancient people could stemmed t radition recently acquired "And there is nothing connecting this travel great distances by boat isn't far­ greater significance: Inside the Pais­ to any Clovis site," J enkins said. "You fetched; many anthropologists believe ley Caves in Oregon, scientists exca­ have two technologies existing at the that humans voyaged from the Asian vated similar points that were asso­ same time in North America, and there mainland to Australia 45,000 years ago. ciated with organic material yielding is no direct immediate relationship." Though Erlandson said he's con­ radiocarbon dates 13,000 years old­ To answer critics, Jenkins and his vinced that the Clovis people were not contemporary with Clovis. team tested the DNA of project partic­ the first in the Americas, he acknowl­ The University of Oregon's Dennis ipants, to make sure they had not con­ edged that definitive proof of a pre­ L. J enkins, who led the Paisley excava­ taminated the coprolites, and tested Clovis coastal route may never be tion, re-examined a site first explored the sediments surrounding the copro­ found: Whatever beach settlements in the 1930s. The earlier documenta­ lites for modern rodent urine and other existed in those days of especially low tion (photographs and some film) was telltale signs the area had been tainted. sea level were long ago submerged or insufficient to show a definite associa­ They found no evidence of contempo­ swept away by Pacific tides. tion between the bones and artifacts. rary animal or human DNA Moreover, the Channel Islands pro­ But soon, he said, "we had artifacts and Jenkinsandhiscolleaguespublished jectiles have nothing in common with we had the bones" from the site. To de­ the final results this year and closed the Clovis points, as Erlandson pointed out. termine ifthe human artifacts were the site: "We've gotten to the bottom," he They appear to be related to a different same age as the animal remains, the said. "We've convinced the people who toolmaking approach called the researchers conducted radiocarbon are willing to be convinced that the western stemmed tradition; featuring dating tests on human coprolites- caves are as old as Clovis, if not older."

46 SMITHSONIAN.OOM I February 2013 westward when the cold snap brought dry, windy, inhospitable weather to the East Coast. But the archaeological evidence found so far in support of a European migration more than 20,000 years ago has raised skepticism. And as is the case with the kelp highway, many sites that could prove or disprove the hy­ pothesis are now underwater. Dillehay said he had found the idea ofan Atlantic crossing worthy offur­ ther investigation, even though "the hard evidence is not yet there." Waters, of Texas A&M, is skeptical ''I'm looking for clean evidence," he said. "We're past 'Clovis first,' and we're developing a new model. You read the literature and you use your imagina­ tion, but then you have to go out and find the empirical evidence to support your hypothesis." None ofthe doubts expressed by crit­ ics have stopped Stanford and Bradley, Perhaps the most radical scholarly ently rather compact, may have been veterans ofthe Clovis wars, from push­ work suggests the Americas were col­ forced by encroaching glaciers and ex­ ingforward. "Solutreanpeople became mlized first by immigrants from Europe treme cold to cluster on the Atlantic more and more efficient in exploiting several thousand years before Clovis. coast. At some point, Stanford and the rich sea margin resources," they The theory is the brainchild of Dennis Bradley say, the stresses ofoverpopu­ write inAcrossAtlantic Ice. "Eventually Stanford, a curator ofNorth American lation may have forced some Solutre­ their range expansion led them to a archaeology at the National Museum ans to escape by sea. They headed whole new world in the west." of Natural History, and Bruce Bradley, north and west beneath the Atlantic an archaeologist at Britain's University ice sheet to nudge into North America These days Waters says his research of Exeter. In their 2012 book Across at the Grand Banks ofNewfoundland. focuses on pre-Clovis or likely pre­ Atlantic Ice, they suggest that these Stanford and Bradley say evidence Clovis sites where more information Europeans reached the New World for the ' presence in Amer­ can be obtained. Unlike many of his more than 20,000 years ago, settled in ica includes stone artifacts gathered colleagues, Waters isn't captive to peer the eastern United States, developed by archaeologists at several sites on reviewers at granting agencies; the the Clovis technology over several the eastern shore of , Center for the Study ofthe First Amer­ thousand years, then spread across the all producing dates more than 20,000 icans also has its own funding. "In the continent. years old. Most of the dates were past you'd propose something and This theory is based partly on simi­ derived from organic material found send it out for review, and the Clovis larities between Clovis points and with the artifacts. The exception was a people would shoot it down," he said. finely crafted "laurel leaf" points from mastodon tusk with attached bone and It was against the backdrop of re­ Europe's Solutrean culture, which teeth netted by a fisherman in 1974, newed enthusiasm for findings predat­ flourished in southwestern along with a laurel leaf-shaped stone ing Clovis settlements that Waters re­ and northern between 24,000 knife. Stanford found the tusk to be opened the Page-Ladson site on the and 17,000 years ago. Stanford and 22,760 years old. Among other things, Aucilla River. For Waters, the debate Bradley argue that artifacts found at the provides about Clovis "is finished," he said over Page-Ladson, as well as other pre-Clo­ context not only for the Clovis people, breakfast one morning in Perry, vis sites, including the Meadowcroft but also for North America's pre-Clo­ Florida, before we went out to the Au­ Rock Shelter in western Pennsylvania vis sites. And it does not rule out cilia site. "The objective everywhere and the sand dunes of Cactus Hill in Bering Sea migrations- those could we go is to learn more about pre-Clo­ southeastern Virginia, have similari­ have happened, too. vis by doing good science. I'm inves­ ties to Solutrean technologies. "Solutrean evolved into Clovis over tigating the first Americans." If some The Solutreans, whose territory on close to 13,000 years," Stanford said, folks don't want to believe it, he added, the European continent was appar- and the Clovis hunters began migrating "that's up to them." 0

February 2013 I SMITHSONIAN.COM 47