Talk:Clovis culture

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[edit] "Archaeology is a purely theoretical endeavour"

Wait... is this true? Sure, archaeology forms theories about the past, but those theories are supported by actual, physical, evidence. Can someone explain this statement to me (I could well be wrong), or should we delete it? Nightsky 00:22, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Oops, this article has been listed on Slashdot, so expect a flood of vandalism. PhilHibbs 10:07, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't see any vandalism on this article, just poor structure. I'm also surprised there is not much more discussion on this article, it seems so interesting. Ernestleonard 02:32, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree there should be more discussion, this is fascinating. I was going to add a link to a controvertial early man site, http://calicodig.com/, but I'm not sure if I should do that. "main stream" sites already listed include Topper, Meadowcraft, and Monte Verde. But, for those interested, the Calico early man site in Yermo, CA was the only site in the new world where Dr. Louis Leakey worked. Leakey was convinced the Calico site was bona fide. But, they came up with a date around 250,000 years old. That didn't bother Leakey but the rest of the archeological community would not accept those dates, they are just too old. But, the artifacts are good and the dates (using optically stimulated luminescence and thermal luminescence dating) are IMHO solid dates. I think the Calico artifacts are much more convincing then the Meadowcraft artifacts, and the Calico tools are much older. Check out the link. Rich.lewis 23:06, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Regarding Monte Verde

Regarding this section: "One such site, Monte Verde in Chile, appear to have remains from before Clovis mixed with Clovis technology. Archaeologists do not currently agree, however, that anything found at these sites establishes a human presence prior to Clovis." -- is this really the case? A History Channel program I saw this morning stated that some of the staunchest, Clovis-people-were-first proponents had travelled to Monte Verde and were convinced by the findings presented to them that there indeed was a human presence in the Americas prior to the time generally associated with the Clovis people. Is the statement above, as it appears in the Wikipedia article, truly accurate? --cdjaco 17:37, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

The statement quoted above does appear to be obsolete; Monte Verde is older than the Clovis culture, according to:

  http://www.unl.edu/rhames/monte_verde/MonteVerde.htm

There was apparently a challenge to the Monte Verde findings:

  http://www.cabrillo.edu/~crsmith/mverde_revisited.html

I'm having a hard time discovering via Google if the challenge was ever settled to the satisfaction of a majority of the archeological community. Models_of_migration_to_the_New_World is unequivocal that pre-Clovis dates at Monte Verde are accepted; either that article is wrong, or this one... The Clovis_culture article *APPEARS* to be incomplete (at best; possibly incorrect!) on the issue of Monte Verde -- at the least, implying the site is more-widely-debated than seems to be the case. --Steve

[edit] Link to Mormons?

I know the Latter Day Saints Movement article is extensive, and I read that Smith believed his sacred plates which had the Book of Mormon written on them were written by ancient Americans. Should there be a link to this bit of info on this page?

Not unless there's archaeological evidence to suggest any such link, which there isn't. Joey 05:24, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree, the focus of this article is scientific archeology. No hard evidence, no link. Rich.lewis 22:54, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

There actually is substantial evidence correlating Indian cultures such as the clovis and archaic to what is mentioned in the Book of Mormon (But in whose opinion eh?). One simple example is that the Book of Mormon mentions that the first inhabitants of the America’s lived around used elephants and two other forms of megafauna for which Joseph Smith did not give translations (he leaves them in the original language “curlome and cumon”, presumably because he did not know what what they were and thus could not translate the words). Now archeologists have verified that paleoindians did in fact use mammoths, giant sloths and giant bison. For scholarly references see http://www.weaverresearch.org/tomsfinalpaper.htm However, I agree that perhaps not enough evidence has been accumulated to put it into wikipedia yet

But according to smith, the book of mormon people only date back to 600bc. not 11,000bc. Cutlerite

[edit] Article is unreferenced

See Wikipedia policies:

[edit] Possible starting place for references

http://archaeology.about.com/od/clovispreclovis/a/clovis_bib_4.htm

If anybody wants to start, here's a link to an extensive bibliography on Clovis at About:com. I don't want to copy and paste because i think that, although it's just a list, it might violate their copyright.Profhum 16:57, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Clovis First controversy

This isn't my field. I came to it by fact-checking one of Jared Diamond's assertions for something of my own. I remember reading, in some authoritative place like the New Yorker or the Atlantic, an absolutely withering analysis of the academic politics involved in the Clovis First debate. Yet Professor Diamond, an extremely reputable source, accepts Clovis. I must be mistaken. Does anybody remember that article? Profhum 16:57, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dates

I've reverted the date first paragraph to say that the Clovis culture first appeared around 13,500 years ago; rather than 11,500 that someone had changed this to.

Interestingly, the BBC "Stone Age Columbus" Horizon documentary [1] used the 11,500 BP date; but the revised PBS Nova version "America's Stone Age Explorers" [2] had this changed to 13,500 BP.

This site [3] from the U.S. National Parks service also uses the 13,500 BP date. It seems that although radiocarbon dating gives 11,500 BP, there is good reason to systematically revise the radiocarbon dates when you compare them with other dating methods; 13,500 BP is the date you get if you consolidate all the dating methods into a single best "calendar date" chronology. Jheald 09:55, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Clovis and Folsom info

I moved all the discovery information into its own section. In doing so, I noticed that the first discovery mentioned (the 1926 one) is not of a Clovis culture point but a Folsom culture point. That makes it maybe 3000 years younger. Is the 1926 discovery really relevant to this article, then, or should it be moved to the Folsom culture page? Nightsky 23:04, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Solutrean Hypothesis

Proponents of the Solutrean hypothesis do not claim that Solutrean-era migrants became the Clovis culture, as this article states. They merely say that the Solutreans may have been the donor culture of a tool-making complex. Also, the Solutreans were not completely displaced until 15000 BCE, not 17000. Twalls 20:47, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


[edit] This article need a lot of work

And divide the content: Clovis isn't all the paleoamerican.

And i.e.: [4] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 164.41.56.101 (talk) 20:20, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Texas-arrowheads-clovis.jpg

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BetacommandBot (talk) 05:04, 30 November 2007 (UTC)