Stone tools cut swathe through Clovis history

By MATT KAPLAN - NATURENEWS - NATURE.COM
Added: Wed, 30 Mar 2011 14:43:50 UTC

Dig uncovers previously unknown North American culture.
The long-standing idea that the Clovis people of ancient North America were the first tool-using humans on the continent 13,200 years ago is being overturned by the discovery of human artefacts in a Texan creek bed that are even older.

Michael Waters, a geoarchaeologist at Texas A&M University in College Station, and his team unearthed more than 15,000 stone artefacts from the Debra L. Friedkin archaeological site in Texas. Using luminescence dating, which dates the last time samples were exposed to sunlight, the researchers found that the artefacts are between 13,200 and 15,500 years old. They seem to have been left undisturbed by any sort of soil movement, suggesting that the artefacts come from a time before the Clovis people came to dominate the landscape.

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