Clovis culture Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
The Clovis culture is a prehistoric Native American culture that first appears in the archaeological record of North America around 12,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age. They are named for artifacts found near Clovis, New Mexico, where the first evidence of this tool complex was excavated in 1932.A hallmark of Clovis culture is the use of a distinctively-shaped fluted spear point, known as the Clovis point. (The fluting allowed the point to be mounted onto a spear in a way that allowed the point to snap off on impact.) It is not known whether presence of Clovis points indicates the presence of Clovis people, or simply the adoption of a superior technology by non-Clovis people. For example, Monte Verde in Chile appears to have remains from before Clovis, but also has some Clovis technology.
The Clovis culture is generally agreed to be the first human presence in America, simply because there is no solid evidence of pre-Clovis human inhabitation. Existence of a culture older than Clovis in North and South America has been debated by archaeologists for years, and a number of sites have been claimed to date prior to Clovis. Unfortunately, nothing so far found at these sites have been conclusively agreed upon as being older than Clovis.
It is generally accepted that Clovis people hunted mammoth: sites abound where Clovis points are found mixed in with mammoth remains. Whether they drove the mammoth to extinction via overhunting them--the so-called Pleistocene overkill hypothesis--is still an open, and controversial, question.
A recent early American site, Cactus Hill, on the east coast of the USA, has identified a possible link between Clovis peole and Solutrean people in Europe. Issues of distance (the Atlantic Ocean) and time (14000 years ago for Clovis vs 19000-16000 years ago for Solutrean) have still not been wholly resolved. This is controversial, as (i) it is generally accepted that the Clovis people came to America from Asia across Beringia, the land bridge across the Bering Strait and (ii) it implies they used boats.
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