The Americas

Early Americas

Palaeolithic Cultures Early Africa (Intro) Early Americas (Intro) Early Asia (Intro) Early China (Intro) Early Europe (Intro) Early Near East (Intro) Early Oceania (Intro)

The pre-history of the Americas seems comparatively short in terms of human activity, but small windows of opportunity to view events can be gained through archaeology. Masses of material are found each year by archaeologists, and a system was long ago needed to help organise all these findings.

The system which has evolved to catalogue the various archaeological expressions of human progress is one which involves cultures. For well over a century, archaeological cultures have remained the framework for global prehistory. The earliest cultures which emerge from Africa are perhaps the easiest to catalogue, right up until human expansion reaches the Americas. The task of cataloguing that vast range of human cultures is covered in the related feature (see link, right). Archaeological cultures remain the framework for global prehistory.

The earliest migrations into the 'New World' of the Americas seem to have begun between 40,000 and 15,000 years ago. These first arrivals made the most of the Bering land bridge which joined Asia to North America during the most recent ice age. Elements of modern Native American society prefers to propose that they have always been living in the New World and that a migration simply did not take place, while academia hotly contests the proposed dates for the first arrivals. In fact it is quite clear that there was not one long migration but several, perhaps hundreds, each depositing small groups of new arrivals.

However, the starting point for these many migrations may have been what is now northern-western Canada, from one or more small populations which made the journey across the Bering Straits and then incubated there for several thousand years (see 22,000 BC, below).

The anthropologist Douglas C Wallace has studied modern human habitation of Africa over more than the last 100,000 years to their very origins. His studies in relation to migration into the Americas are backed up by DNA evidence which proposes not a land bridge migration but a seaborne movement from south-east Asia. The scene he reconstructs depicts groups of prehistoric, intrepid seafarers moving not out of Siberia, as has long been assumed, but across the Pacific Ocean to reach the Americas around 12,000 to 6,000 years ago. Doubtless this is one possibility for many of the later migrations, and it would make many American Indians distant cousins of the Polynesians.

The earliest cultures of the Americas are perhaps the easiest to catalogue. They include the near-universally widespread Palaeo-Indian era and the Clovis culture. These are especially interesting as they chart human progress after around 25,000 BC, roughly around the time at which the most recent ice age was building to a peak (very severely in Europe and less so in the Near East, Central Asia, early China, early Japan, and even Siberia).

Humans in the Americas had no cultural competition except from other humans, provided of course that they could survive another 15,000 years of ice age (see the 'Prehistoric World' index for information on pre-modern human Earth, via the link on the right). Later human cultures were generally more specific to either North America, Mesoamerica, or South America.

(Information by Peter Kessler, with additional information by Edward Dawson, from A Genetic Signal of Central European Celtic Ancestry, David K Faux, from Investigating Archaeological Cultures: Material Culture, Variability, and Transmission, Benjamin W Roberts & Marc Vander Linden (Eds), and from External Link: Humans in America (Phys.org).)

c.128,000 BC

Dating for mastodon remains found in southern California seemingly shatters the timeline of human migration to the Americas, pushing the presence of hominins (not modern humans) back to 130,000 years ago.

A Homo erectus male as recreated by palaeo-artist John Gurche, representing possibly the most likely candidate for the first ancient human type to have entered the Americas

The teeth and bones of a elephant-like creature which are unmistakably modified by human-like hands, along with stone hammers and anvils, leave no doubt that a species of early human has feasted on its carcass. The identity of this species of human is not known, but the most likely candidates include Homo denisovan, Homo erectus - prolific in Asia from around 1.8 million years ago - and, less likely, Homo sapiens (archaic) (see feature link to start with the earliest of these.)

c.50,000 BC

The dimensions of prehistoric skulls which are found by archaeologists in Brazil match those of the aboriginal peoples of Australia and Melanesia. The site is at Serra Da Capivara in remote north-eastern Brazil, where cave paintings provide the first clue to the existence of these people. They could reach South America as far back as 50,000 BC, with their arrival most likely due to their ocean-going vessel being blown off course.

Palaeo-Indian Americas (Palaeolithic)
c.40,000 - 8000 BC

Palaeolithic Cultures Early Africa (Intro) Early Americas (Intro) Early Asia (Intro) Early China (Intro) Early Europe (Intro) Early Near East (Intro) Early Oceania (Intro)

The term Palaeo-Indians or Palaeo-Americans is applied to the first peoples who entered and afterwards inhabited the Americas during the concluding glacial episodes of the late Pleistocene period. The prefix 'palaeo-' originates in the Greek adjective, palaios, meaning 'old' or 'ancient'. The term 'Palaeo-Indians' relates precisely to the 'stone-tools' period in the western hemisphere and is different from the term 'Palaeolithic'.

Until comparatively recently, the first prehistoric Native American communities were regarded as being part of the Clovis culture. An improved picture of events has shown that quite a bit happened before the rise of the Clovis, but the Palaeo-Indian era still provides an umbrella for the Clovis culture, the Western Fluted Point tradition, the Post Pattern culture, the Folsom tradition, the Plano cultures, and the Cody complex.

Traditional theories suggest that big-animal hunters crossed the Bering Straits from North Asia into North America over a land and ice bridge (referred to as Beringia). Modern human populations were undergoing rapid expansion during this period, also entering Europe after at least twenty thousand years of less vigorous expansion following migration out of Africa. This land bridge existed between about 45,000-12,000 BC.

Minor, isolated groups of hunter-gatherers migrated alongside herds of large herbivores (Pleistocene megafauna, such as mammoths and mastodons), far into Alaska. From around 16,500-13,500 BC, ice-free corridors developed along the Pacific coast and the valleys of North America. This allowed animals, followed by humans, to migrate south into the interior.

(Information by Mick Baker and Peter Kessler, with additional information from A Genetic Signal of Central European Celtic Ancestry, David K Faux, from Investigating Archaeological Cultures: Material Culture, Variability, and Transmission, Benjamin W Roberts & Marc Vander Linden (Eds), and from External Links: Science Advances, and Humans in America (Phys.org), and A New History of the First Peoples in the Americas, Adam Rutherford (The Atlantic), and The first Americans could have taken a coastal route into the New World, Bruce Bower (Science News), and Mastodon meal scraps revise US prehistory, Jonathon Webb (BBC), and From Siberia to the Arctic and the Americas, Douglas Wallace (DNA Learning Center), and Tracking the First Americans, Glenn Hodges (National Geographic), and Human footprints (The Guardian), and Some of the first humans in the Americas came from China (The Guardian), and Giant sloth pendants (The Guardian).)

c.40,000 BC

Evidence exists in New Mexico to support an early arrival of humans in the Americas. What appear to be human footprints are preserved in volcanic ash in the town of Clovis, although the claim that they are human is controversial.

An archaeologist's view of Alaska's modern coast wouldn't look too much different from the coastal regions of Berengia, the lost 'continent' of land which once linked the Americas to the Far East

c.30,000 BC

The period known as the Last Glacial Maximum begins around this time. The planet is subjected to a cold snap which sucks up ocean waters into glaciers and ice sheets which extend outwards from the poles. Current estimates shown that the sea level falls somewhere between sixty and one hundred and twenty metres lower than it is today.

Previously submerged land is exposed all the way from Alaska to Russia, and all the way southwards to the Aleutians, a crescent chain of volcanic islands which speckle the northern Pacific. The prevailing theory about the first peopling of the Americas concerns them using that Alaska-Russia land 'bridge' (more of a lost continent than a bridge) - Beringia.

c.25,000 BC

For a long time in academia, despite increasing evidence to the contrary, this had been the earliest generally-accepted arrival date for the first migrants to enter North America from Siberia via the Bering land bridge. Perhaps surprisingly, this migration is not limited solely to Siberians. East Asians are included, in a period of migration which lasts from about 24,000 BC to 17,500 BC.

The sloth-bone ornaments were discovered about thirty years ago at a rock shelter called Santa Elina, in central Brazil, with the new study being the first to analyse them extensively and rule out the possibility that humans had found and carved them thousands of years after the animals had perished

In 2023 new evidence is published which confirms that humans are not only entering the Americas between about 25,000-23,000 BC, they already have done so and have made it at least as far south as Brazil. Analysis of triangular and teardrop-shaped pendants prove that they are made from the bones of deceased giant sloths (species extinct around 10,000 BC).

The conclusion is drawn that the pendants are the work of deliberate craftsmanship. The work uses fresh bone material rather than later-discovered leftovers, taken within a few days to a few years at most after the death of the animal.

c.22,000 BC

An emerging theory which is being expanded by DNA data involves the first peopling of the Bluefish Caves (Yukon, Canada) around this time. These people apparently represent a culture which remains isolated for thousands of years in the cold north, incubating a population which will eventually seed the rest of the Americas. This idea has become known as the Beringian Standstill.

Unbroken mastodon ribs and vertebrae, including one vertebra with a large, well-preserved neural spine, which have been dated around 130,000 years old and which seem to show signs of handling by non-modern humans

These founders had already divided themselves from their Siberian cousins of the Aurignacian culture around 40,000 BC when they entered Berengia. They reach the Bluefish Caves around 22,000 BC (perhaps with some influence from and interbreeding with the early Mal'ta-Buret' people of Siberia) and remain there until around 14,000 BC.

DNA analysis of the genomes of indigenous people show fifteen founding mitochondrial types not found in Asia. It is new gene variants from this population which subsequently spread across the Americas but do not cross back into Siberia - the land bridge has been submerged.

Nowadays, the levels of genetic diversity in modern Native Americans - derived from just those original fifteen - are lower than they are in the rest of the world. Again, this supports the idea of a single, small population seeding the Americas, with little admixture from new populations for many thousands of years.

c.21,000 BC

Reported in 2021, human footprints are discovered in White Sands national park in New Mexico which are dated to the period between 21,000-19.000 BC. The prints had been buried in layers of soil, with scientists from the US Geological Survey analysing embedded seeds in the tracks to calculate the dating. It is also determined that the dozen footprints belong to a variety of people, mostly children and teenagers.

Fossilised human footprints found in White Sands national park in New Mexico, USA, provide conclusive proof of the presence of humans in the Americas as long ago as 21,000 BC

c.15,000 BC

Another theory for the peopling of the Americas places this event towards the end of the most recent ice age, at a point at which glaciers have just receded from a cluster of southern Alaskan islands. Life-supporting habitats appear soon after the ice has melted, allowing people to spread southwards by stopping off at coastal retreats along the Gulf of Alaska and down through British Columbia.

The contention is that the ice-free corridor which would permit a land-based southwards migration will not be anywhere near as hospitable as early as this, so a coastal migration should be the preferred option. Prior to this, Douglas C Wallace's seaborne migrations from south-east Asia are given an earliest proposed arrival date of 12,000 BC.

c.12,550 BC

Dated to this period, stone tools and bones from a butchered mastodon are found by archaeologists at the bottom of the Aucilla River in Florida. A wealth of further evidence is pulled from the same murky sinkhole which includes many more tools, animal bones, and dung samples with chewed-up vegetable matter which allows for conclusive, accurate carbon dating.

Before the river and sediments are laid down at a later date, this area appears to contain a water hole at which both animals and humans gather. The mastodon is either hunted or scavenged.

c.10,500 BC

There is evidence of humans living in southern Chile around this time, immediately after the disappearance of the Clovis culture. These people do not use Clovis technology, and are too far away from the town of Clovis in New Mexico to show a direct link between them and the Clovis in such a way which indicates that the Clovis is the founding culture for South America.

The very nature of Chile's topography made it one of the toughest parts of South America for humans to successfully inhabit

Instead, they are either a completely separate group of migrant-descendants or - less likely due to the lack of cultural similarities - are refugees from the possibly climate-change-induced collapse of the Clovis. The fact that Western Stemmed tools have been found this far south suggests a pan-Pacific coastline tradition which may even predate Clovis.

Clovis Culture (Palaeo-Indian Era)
c.11,500 - 10,900 BC

Palaeolithic Cultures Early Africa (Intro) Early Americas (Intro) Early Asia (Intro) Early China (Intro) Early Europe (Intro) Early Near East (Intro) Early Oceania (Intro)

The Clovis culture is a prehistoric Native American culture which first appears in south-western North America, roughly between 11,500-10,900 BC. Until comparatively recently the Clovis people were thought by many to have been the first to appear in the Americas, but recent finds and a process of revision have shown that pre-Clovis people, labelled Palaeo-Indians, are now to be regarded as the first human inhabitants of the New World and the ancestors of all other indigenous cultures of North America and South America. Clovis culture is part of this Palaeo-Indian era, but is generally accepted not to have been influenced by the discredited Solutrean hypothesis.

Artefacts found near the town of Clovis in New Mexico gave this culture its name following a 1932 excavation. Clovis people were efficient, successful big-game hunters and foragers, especially with ice age mammoths and mastodons. Evidence found in 1926 included a mammoth skeleton with a spear-point in its ribs.

Clovis cultural sites have been located throughout the contiguous United States plus Mexico and the rest of Central America. A single animal was able to provide meat for several weeks on end and, if dried, for much of the winter too. Despite this, a proportion of the kill was never used. Bison kills were more comprehensively exploited and a lesser amount remained at the kill sites. It is presumed that the hides, tusks, bones, and pelts were used to make domestic belongings or survival tools, or were used for shelter and even clothing.

The main hallmark of Clovis culture is the use of a distinctive leaf-shaped rock spear point, known as the Clovis point. This is fluted on both sides, allowing the tip to be mounted on a shaft. There is some disagreement regarding whether the extensive presence of these objects suggests the development of a single people or the advocacy of these methods by non-Clovis people. In some respects, the Clovis people seem to have magically appeared on the North American continent. It has been assumed that their ancestors moved south from Alaska in pursuit of the mammoth herds. However, both in Alaska and Canada, Clovis sites are conspicuous by their absence. Similarly, there are no scientific precursors for Clovis people anywhere in the Americas or in Asia. Clearly the Clovis people only invented their fluted spear points after arriving in the south-west, making it the earliest-known American invention (to date).

Clovis points were made for only about six centuries before they disappeared, along with the culture which created them. As Clovis people settled into different ecological zones, the culture divided into separate groups, each adapting to its own separate environment. However, a more immediate reason for the termination of the culture may be found in climate change around 10,900 BC (see the timeline below), something which the contemporary Western Fluted Point tradition was able to survive.

Those cultural groups which subsequently appeared - such as the Folsom tradition - were the Clovis survivors beginning to rebuild after the catastrophe, but along varying lines which effectively produced new cultures. The end of Clovis marked the beginning of the enormous social, cultural, and linguistic diversity which characterised the next ten thousand years of pre-history in the Americas.

(Information by Mick Baker and Peter Kessler, with additional information from The First Americans: The Pleistocene Colonization of the New World, Nina G Jablonski (California Academy of Sciences, 2002), from The Brave New World: A History of Early America, Peter Charles Hoffer (JHU Press, 2006), from First peoples in a new world: colonizing ice age America, David J Meltzer (University of California, 2009), and from External Links: The Clovis Point and the Discovery of America's First Culture, and Why won't this debate about an ancient cold snap die? (Science News), and Clovis People, and Clovis people not first to arrive in North America, Kazi Stastna (CBC News).)

c.10,900 BC

Archaeological evidence from the Topper site in South Carolina, USA, suggests that Clovis populations here go through a population collapse at the time of the proposed ice age blast. Earth is abruptly plunged back into a deep chill which is known as the Younger Dryas. Temperatures in parts of the northern hemisphere plunge to as much as eight degrees Celsius colder than they are today.

This cold snap lasts 'only' about 1,200 years before, just as abruptly, Earth begins to warm again. But many of the giant mammals are dying out and the Clovis people have apparently vanished.

The Younger Dryas cold spell hit North America hard, just when things were starting to warm up at the end of the ice age - not only did many of the large mammals die out but so did the Clovis culture (click or tap on image to view full sized)

The cause of this sudden cold spell is a mystery. Most researchers suspect that a large pulse of freshwater from a melting ice sheet and glacial lakes flood into the ocean, briefly interfering with Earth's heat-transporting ocean currents.

A more radical and controversial theory states that a comet - or perhaps its remnants - hits or explodes over the Laurentide ice sheet which covers much of North America. The explosion would result in great wildfires across the continent, producing enough soot and other compounds to block out the sun and cool the planet (similar to the much smaller effect experienced after the 1908 Tunguska comet strike which affects Tungusic tribes in that region).

Clovis technology disappears, along with the culture which had created them. The survivors of the cold spell form new groups or fresh variations of the old culture, each adapting to its own separate environment. These include the Folsom tradition, while the contemporary Western Fluted Point tradition is able to endure the cold spell.

Western Fluted Point Tradition (Palaeo-Indian Era)
c.11,200 - 9000 BC
Incorporating the Western Stemmed Tradition

Palaeolithic Cultures Early Africa (Intro) Early Americas (Intro) Early Asia (Intro) Early China (Intro) Early Europe (Intro) Early Near East (Intro) Early Oceania (Intro)

The Western Fluted Point tradition is a prehistoric Native American culture which first appears in California in North America, roughly between 11,200-9000 BC (and possibly earlier when considering more recent finds). It occurred as part of the over-arching Palaeo-Indian era in the Americas, which is still being fine-tuned as more finds come to light. It appeared around three hundred years later than the contemporary Clovis culture but essentially parallel to it and outlasting it by around two thousand years. The fact that it survived a sudden-but-brief ice age called the Younger Dryas while the Clovis did not also contributed to its relative longevity.

Fluted projectile points have long been recognised as being the archaeological signature of early humans who were dispersing throughout the western hemisphere. However, a clear understanding is still lacking regarding their appearance in the interior 'Ice-Free Corridor' of western Canada and eastern Beringia during the early phases of human migration into Palaeo-Indian North America. Unique to the Americas, a flute which has been removed from the base of a stone projectile point in preparation for attachment to a haft can serve as a proxy for investigating the transmission of technology and material culture amongst the first Americans.

The earliest well-dated fluted projectile-point forms are Clovis in origin. For a time in archaeology virtually all projectile points were labelled as Clovis or Folsom (after the spear point discovery of 1927 in the New Mexico town of the same name). Only since the beginning of the twenty-first century has there been any discussion of the possibility of a non-Clovis fluted form in the California region of the USA, however careful that discussion may have been in its use of terminology. A picture is emerging of a non-Clovis proliferation along the west coast, filtering downwards from the Berengian ice bridge over several centuries to provide the Western Fluted Point tradition.

Initially the Western Stemmed tradition was also believed to have derived from Clovis, but this too is now thought to be a part of a west coast practice which at first was hemmed in from eastwards expansion by the long range of inland mountains which include the Rocky Mountains. Artefacts of this type, which use smaller pieces of stone than Clovis samples, can be found all along the Pacific coastline in Chile and as far south as Argentina.

Today the Western Stemmed tradition is seen as predating Clovis now that its dates in the west have been shown to be as old, if not older, than Clovis dates. Its technology is also very different from that of Clovis, and may well predate it. The Post Pattern culture which started around the same time, but in north-western California, lasted a further two thousand years.

(Information by Peter Kessler, with additional information by Edward Dawson, and from External Links: Origins and spread of fluted-point technology in the Canadian Ice-Free Corridor and eastern Beringia (PNAS), and How the Folsom Point Became an Archaeological Icon (Discover), and What's Not Clovis? An Examination of Fluted Points in the Far West (Taylor & Francis Online), and Spear tips point to path of first Americans (AAAS), and Clovis Age Western Stemmed Projectile Points and Human Coprolites at the Paisley Caves (AAAS), and Chile's ancient exploding comet (Phys.org).)

c.12,500 BC

Some of the oldest Western Stemmed points in the region are found in Oregon's Paisley Caves. They are as old as any Clovis influence in Oregon (and both suggest that start dates for these cultures need to be pushed back by a good millennium). The finds show that these two distinct technologies are parallel developments, not the product of a unilinear technological evolution. 'Blind testing' analysis of coprolites confirms the presence of human DNA in specimens which are of pre-Clovis age.

The Paisley Caves complex in Oregon displays a good deal of evidence of human occupation from around 12,500 BC and onwards, providing confirmation that the Western Stemmed tradition is at least as old here as any Clovis finds

c.10,900 BC

While Clovis populations undergo a collapse at the time of a proposed ice age blast known as the Younger Dryas, the Western Fluted Point tradition survives. Temperatures in parts of the northern hemisphere plunge to as much as eight degrees Celsius colder than they are today. This cold snap lasts 'only' about 1,200 years before just as abruptly warming again. Post Pattern culture also survives the cold snap.

c.10,000 BC

Around this time, something scorches a vast swathe of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile with heat so intense that it turns the sandy soil into widespread slabs of silicate glass. Research reveals (in 2021) that samples of the desert glass contain tiny fragments which have minerals which are often found in rocks with an extraterrestrial origin. Those minerals closely match the composition of material which had been returned to Earth by Nasa's 'Stardust' mission to the comet 'Wild 2'.

It seems that an extraterrestrial object, most likely a comet, now suffers an airburst explosion above Chile's coastline. The explosion is massive, having a dramatic effect on a large area and perhaps severely affecting the region's already-declining population of large mammals (and quite possibly several groups of humans in the area).

Deposits of dark silicate glass are strewn across a corridor measuring seventy-five kilometres, in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, with research showing that those glasses were likely formed by the heat of an ancient comet exploding above the surface

A contrary argument is that the glass results from ancient grass fires, as the region is not the desert it is today. The comet theory easily discredits such claims with details of its findings. Only an airborne explosion of some violence could have produced all of the witnessed results.

Post Pattern Culture (Palaeo-Indian Era)
c.11,200 - 7000 BC

Palaeolithic Cultures Early Africa (Intro) Early Americas (Intro) Early Asia (Intro) Early China (Intro) Early Europe (Intro) Early Near East (Intro) Early Oceania (Intro)

The prehistoric Native American Post Pattern culture occurred during the over-arching Palaeo-Indian era in the Americas. Located in north-western California, it forms part of the Western Pluvial Lakes tradition. It appeared at approximately the same time as the Western Fluted Point tradition to its south. However the Post Pattern outlasted its southern neighbour by about two thousand years, and the Great Plains-dominant Folsom by a thousand.

Excavation sites are located around Clear Lake in California's Lake County (claimed to be the oldest lake in North America, having been formed around 2.5 million years ago), and Borax Lake around which have been found notable Clovis tool remains. The people of this culture are believed to have entered history as the Yukian-speakers of western California (a now-extinct language since the late twentieth century AD). The name itself is for its discoverer in 1938, Chester C Post.

(Information by Peter Kessler, with additional information from Languages. Handbook of North American Indians, Ives Goddard (Ed, W C Sturtevant, General Ed, Vol 17, 1996), and from External Links: Origins and spread of fluted-point technology in the Canadian Ice-Free Corridor and eastern Beringia (PNAS), and How the Folsom Point Became an Archaeological Icon (Discover), and What's Not Clovis? An Examination of Fluted Points in the Far West (Taylor & Francis Online), and Spear tips point to path of first Americans (AAAS).)

c.10,900 BC

While Clovis populations undergo a collapse at the time of a proposed ice age blast known as the Younger Dryas, both the Western Fluted Point tradition and the Post-Pattern culture survive. Temperatures in parts of the northern hemisphere plunge to as much as eight degrees Celsius colder than they are today. This cold snap lasts 'only' about 1,200 years before just as abruptly warming again.

The Younger Dryas cold spell hit North America hard, just when things were starting to warm up at the end of the ice age - not only did many of the large mammals die out but so did the Clovis culture (click or tap on image to view full sized)

Folsom Tradition / Lindenmeier Culture (Palaeo-Indian Era)
c.9000 - 8000 BC

Palaeolithic Cultures Early Africa (Intro) Early Americas (Intro) Early Asia (Intro) Early China (Intro) Early Europe (Intro) Early Near East (Intro) Early Oceania (Intro)

The prehistoric Native American Folsom tradition occurred during the over-arching Palaeo-Indian era in the Americas. It was located across the Great Plains of western North America and in adjacent areas of the west and south-west, in time extending eastwards of the Mississippi into the Great Lakes area and across to New Jersey, Also known as the Lindenmeier culture, it is classified as a successor to the Clovis culture. It is named after artefacts found in 1927 at Folsom, New Mexico, which are characterised by their fluted projectile points which are generally rather smaller (and more efficient) than Clovis points.

The earliest well-dated fluted projectile-point forms are Clovis in origin and, for a time in archaeology, virtually all projectile points were labelled as Clovis or Folsom. Clovis points were made for only about six centuries before they disappeared, along with the culture which created them. As Clovis people had settled into different ecological zones, their culture had already divided into separate groups, each adapting to its own individual environment. A sudden shift in climate around 10,900 BC triggered a thousand-year cold spell which terminated the Clovis, although the contemporary Western Fluted Point tradition was able to survive. Replacement cultures, such as the Folsom, appeared after the catastrophe.

Most known Folsom sites are kill sites at which bison have been slaughtered and butchered. Some contain the remains of up to fifty beasts. A more substantial site at Hanson, Wyoming, has evidence of three hard-standings which may have been the sites of dwellings. In addition to bison remains, the bones of mountain sheep, deer, marmot, and cotton-tail rabbit illustrate the diversity of species which were exploited by groups within this tradition.

(Information by Peter Kessler, with additional information from Languages. Handbook of North American Indians, Ives Goddard (Ed, W C Sturtevant, General Ed, Vol 17, 1996), and from External Links: Origins and spread of fluted-point technology in the Canadian Ice-Free Corridor and eastern Beringia (PNAS), and How the Folsom Point Became an Archaeological Icon (Discover), and What's Not Clovis? An Examination of Fluted Points in the Far West (Taylor & Francis Online), and Spear tips point to path of first Americans (AAAS), and Folsom Tradition (Oxford Reference), and Folsom Traditions (Manitoba Archaeological Society).)

c.9000 BC

Around seven hundred years after the ending of the Younger Dryas cold spell which had terminated the Clovis culture, the ice sheets are gradually retreating. More land to the north is becoming available, and for the next millennium the people of the Folsom tradition likewise expand northwards to exploit the fresh resources.

Not all important Folsom sites have beautiful tool collections - some collections are relatively small and not always in great shape even though they are no less significant, such as finds from the Wasden Owl Cave site in eastern Idaho

It is principally grasslands which appear across the north once nature recovers, replacing the spruce forest habitat of the mammoth with territory which is more suitable to large numbers of bison herds. The Folsom people are able to adapt and modify their tools and techniques to follow the bison and to thrive by hunting them.

Historical information which can be interpreted in light of Folsom archaeology sites indicates that Folsom people engage in the careful planning and coordination of their hunting. They are able to carry out successful communal activities in which large groups work together for their common advantage. After the hunting season has come to an end, it is likely that the groups break up and each clan returns to its preferred wintering location.

Once humans manage to distribute themselves across the Americas, later cultures become specific for either North America, Mesoamerica, or South America.