Clovis culture facts for kids
The Clovis culture is a prehistoric Paleo-Indian culture, named after distinct stone tools found at sites near Clovis, New Mexico, in the 1920s and 1930s. Archaeologists' most precise determinations at present suggest that this cultures age is equal to roughly 13,500 to 13,000 calendar years ago. Clovis people are considered to be the ancestors of most of the indigenous cultures of North and South America.
Description
The culture was originally named for a small number of artifacts found between 1936 and 1938 at Blackwater Locality No. 1, an archaeological site near the town of Clovis, New Mexico. People began collecting artifacts at this site in the late 1920s but artifacts and animal remains that had not moved since the Pleistocene were not recovered until 1936.
Clovis sites have since been identified throughout much, but not all, of the contiguous United States, as well as Mexico and Central America, and even into northern South America.
A hallmark of the toolkit associated with the Clovis culture is the distinctively shaped, fluted stone spear point, known as the Clovis point. It is generally accepted that Clovis people hunted mammoth as Clovis points have repeatedly been found in sites containing mammoth remains. Mammoth was only a small part of the Clovis diet; extinct bison, mastodon, sloths, tapir, horse and a host of smaller animals have also been found in Clovis sites where they were killed and eaten. In total, more than 125 species of plants and animals are known to have been used by Clovis people in the portion of the Western Hemisphere they inhabited.
Images for kids
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Clovis points from the Rummells-Maske Cache Site, Iowa
See also
In Spanish: Cultura Clovis para niños
