Calico Early Man Site

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The Calico Early Man Site is an archaeological site in an ancient Pleistocene lake located near Barstow in San Bernardino County in the central Mojave Desert of southern California. This site is on and in late middle- fanglomerates (now-cemented alluvial debris flow deposits) known variously as the Calico Hills, the Yermo Hills, or the Yermo formation. Holocene evidence includes petroglyphs and trail segments that are probably related to outcrops of local high-quality siliceous rock (primarily chalcedony in freshwater limestone).

The Calico Early Man Site includes:

The tools and flakes of LMLI and those found in the nested inset known as the Rock Wren Locality were probably made by modern man (Homo sapiens sapiens).

The stone tools of these industries, along with preforms, lithic core, technical flakes, and pieces of angular debitage, mainly of chalcedony, are found on and in late middle Pleistocene-age fanglomerates and younger inset alluvial terraces in the Calico Hills (also known as the Yermo Hills) east of the Calico Peaks and the Calico Mountains. The location is in the central portion of southern California's Mojave Desert. Historically, this archaeological project has also been known as "The Calico Mountains Archaeological Site" and "The Calico Hills Archaeological Site". Today, it is called "The Calico Early Man Site".

In most of the Great Basin region, and Holocene alluviation has effectively buried and sealed earlier sediments and possible evidence of pre-Clovis cultures. In the Manix Basin (Lower Mojave Valley) of San Bernardino County, California, however, a fortuitous ensemble of environmental factors relating to mountain building; climatically controlled conditions for lake formation, alluviation, and erosion; faulting and folding; and significant erosion of ancient lacustrine plain sediments by the modern drainage have rendered relatively accessible for archaeological investigation a series of deposits that represent more than 350,000 years of Quaternary history.