Clovis Culture

The Clovis culture is a prehistoric Paleo-Indian culture, named for distinct stone tools found in close association with fauna at Blackwater Locality No. 1 near Clovis, New Mexico, in the 1920s and 1930s. The Clovis culture appears around 11,500–11,000 uncal RCYBP (uncalibrated radiocarbon years before present), at the end of the last glacial period, and is characterized by the manufacture of "Clovis points" and distinctive bone and ivory tools. Archaeologists' most precise determinations at present suggest that this radiocarbon age is equal to roughly 13,200 to 12,900 calendar years ago. Clovis people are considered to be the ancestors of most of the indigenous cultures of the Americas.

The only human burial that has been directly associated with tools from the Clovis culture included the remains of an infant boy named Anzick-1. Researchers from the United States and Europe conducted paleogenetic research on Anzick-1's ancient nuclear, mitochondrial, and Y-chromosome DNA. The results of these analyses reveal that Anzick-1 is closely related to modern Native American populations, which lends support to the Beringia hypothesis for the peopling of the Americas.

The Clovis culture was replaced by several more localized regional cultures from the time of the Younger Dryas cold climate period onward. Post-Clovis cultures include the Folsom tradition, Gainey, Suwannee-Simpson, Plainview-Goshen, Cumberland, and Redstone. Each of these is commonly thought to derive directly from Clovis, in some cases apparently differing only in the length of the fluting on their projectile points. Although this is generally held to be the result of normal cultural change through time, numerous other reasons have been suggested to be the driving force for the observed changes in the archaeological record, such as the Younger Dryas impact event or post-glacial climate change with numerous faunal extinctions.

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