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Approximately 13,500 years after nomadic Clovis hunters crossed the frozen land bridge from Asia to North America, researchers are still asking questions and putting together clues as to how they not only survived in a new landscape with unique new challenges but adapted with stone tools and weapons to thrive for thousands of years.
They have studied stone projectile points, such as arrowheads and spear points, made by flint knapping, the ancient practice of chipping away at the edges of rocks to shape them into weapons and tools. A recent article explains the flint knapping technique of “fluting” the Clovis points, which could be considered the first truly American invention. This singular technological attribute, the flake removal or “flute,” is absent from the stone-tool repertoire of Pleistocene Northeast Asia, where the Clovis ancestors came from.Image credit: Bob Christy/Kent State University
