From University of Chicago Press Journals: New research challenges the controversial theory that an ancient comet impact devastated the Clovis people, one of the earliest known cultures to inhabit North America.
Writing in the October issue of Current Anthropology, archaeologists Vance Holliday (University of Arizona) and David Meltzer (Southern Methodist University) argue that there is nothing in the archaeological record to suggest an abrupt collapse of Clovis populations. “Whether or not the proposed extraterrestrial impact occurred is a matter for empirical testing in the geological record,” the researchers write. “Insofar as concerns the archaeological record, an extraterrestrial impact is an unnecessary solution for an archaeological problem that does not exist.”
The comet theory first emerged in 2007 when a team of scientists announced evidence of a large extraterrestrial impact that occurred about 12,900 years ago. The impact was said to have caused a sudden cooling of the North American climate, killing off mammoths and other megafauna. It could also explain the apparent disappearance of the Clovis people, whose characteristic spear points vanish from the archaeological record shortly after the supposed impact.
As evidence for the rapid Clovis depopulation, comet theorists point out that very few Clovis archaeological sites show evidence of human occupation after the Clovis. At the few sites that do, Clovis and post-Clovis artifacts are separated by archaeologically sterile layers of sediments, indicating a time gap between the civilizations. In fact, comet theorists argue, there seems to be a dead zone in the human archaeological record in North America beginning with the comet impact and lasting about 500 years.
Caption: This image shows the excavations at the Lubbock Lake site, on the High Plains of Texas. The crew is working in the laminated lake beds dated 13,000 to 12,000 years old. The time of the purported extraterrestrial impact would be at the base of the lake beds. The pale olive yellow layer below contains Clovis-age bone. The black layers represent a marshy valley bottom and contain archaeological bone beds (with butchered remains of extinct bison). The white layers are archaeologically “sterile” because they represent standing lake water (probably 1 to 2 m deep). Thus, the presence of “sterile” zones between occupation layers has no bearing on the issue of an impact and people.
Credit: Vance Holliday
But Holliday and Meltzer dispute those claims. They argue that a lack of later human occupation at Clovis sites is no reason to assume a population collapse. “Single-occupation Paleoindian sites—Clovis or post-Clovis—are the norm,” Holliday said. That’s because many Paleoindian sites are hunting kill sites, and it would be highly unlikely for kills to be made repeatedly in the exact same spot.
“So there is nothing surprising about a Clovis occupation with no other Paleoindian zone above it, and it is no reason to infer a disaster,” Holliday said.
In addition, Holliday and Meltzer compiled radiocarbon dates of 44 archaeological sites from across the U.S. and found no evidence of a post-comet gap. “Chronological gaps appear in the sequence only if one ignores standard deviations (a statistically inappropriate procedure), and doing so creates gaps not just around [12,900 years ago] but also at many later points in time,” they write.
Sterile layers separating occupation zones at some sites are easily explained by shifting settlement patterns and local geological processes, the researchers say. The separation should not be taken as evidence of an actual time gap between Clovis and post-Clovis cultures.
Holliday and Meltzer believe that the disappearance of Clovis spear points is more likely the result of a cultural choice rather than a population collapse. “There is no compelling data to indicate that North American Paleoindians had to cope with or were affected by a catastrophe, extraterrestrial or otherwise, in the terminal Pleistocene,” they conclude.
Caption: These are Clovis Points.
Credit: David Meltzer
Vance T. Holliday and David J. Meltzer, “The 12.9-ka ET Impact Hypothesis and North American Paleoindians.” Current Anthropology 51:5 (October 2010).
Current Anthropology is a transnational journal devoted to research on humankind, encompassing the full range of anthropological scholarship on human cultures and on the human and other primate species. The journal is published by The University of Chicago Press and sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation.
SMU is a private university in Dallas where nearly 11,000 students benefit from the national opportunities and international reach of SMU’s seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
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“Holliday and Meltzer believe that the disappearance of Clovis spear points is more likely the result of a cultural choice rather than a population collapse. ”
What sane civilization would abandon their most advanced technology?
Well Clovis is alive and well even to this day; in fact it is now a relatively high class neighborhood in Fresno California.
So what sort of evidence would suggest a sudden demise of Clovism ?
If you think about what happens today, with the sudden collapse of cultures; it tends to relate to the development of new globally disruptive technologies. Who is still running a CRT on the T&V or their Computer. Payphones have gone; to be replaced by texting.
Dunno why Clovis Points have always interested me; maybe because they seem to be very artistic creations, and must have taken a lot of time to make.
But did some distruptive weapons technology suddenly get people dis-interested in whacking on flint points any more?
Presumably the original home of Clovism was Clovis New Mexico. Somebody will correct me if I’m wrong on that; I am quite often.
So I could believe that the Clovis people just moved on to bigger and better things.
I thought it was well known that these people discovered that burning coal chips was a form of useful heat, which promptly created a “global climate disruption” that killed them all off.
What came after Clovis was not less advanced – it was different, and it worked.
Perhaps one society whose extremely large prey items hand become rare or extinct.
Interesting but they are missing the obvious thing, The clovis disappeared, this is indicated not be the fact they upped sticks and moved but the fact that the clovis type of arrow head vanished. This is the important part, their arrow and spearheads were marvels of stoneage construct, they would not have stopped making them. They died in a mass extinction event, along with all most of the other animals in north america at the time.
Palynological analysis of these lakebed sediments might shed some light on climatic conditions before and after 12.9 kybp. Are such data available?
This paper ignores the physical evidence of a catastrophic event at that time. This physical evidence includes nano diamonds, the markers of a space encounter. It also offers a sensible explanation the disappearance of all megafauna at that time, as well as a sensible explanation for the resurgence of glaciation even though the northern hemisphere had already entered an interglacial warming period.
The paper seems to say that we can’t find clovis points after this point in time is because they stopped using them (at the same time at all clovis settlements from the East coast to the West coast??) and we can’t can’t find evidence of Clovis settlements after this time because they decided to move away at the same time – to somewhere. The paper ignores the extinction of the saber toothed tigers and mammoths etc. at the same time. Presumably they were hunted to extinction after the Clovis moved away (somewhere) and stopped using their fluter spear points.
There are many theories out there, but this one doesn’t tie up other occurrences at the same time. I think its weak.
More likely new immigration simply changed the culture. The lack of game brought about the introduction of primitive agriculture or at least vegetative foraging on a much more refined scale and more varied hunting and war implements.
Perhaps Drs. Holiday, and Meltzer should come out here to California, and have lunch with Terry Jones at Cal Poly. I’m sure Dr Jones would be happy to set them straight.
see: California archaeological record consistent with Younger Dryas disruptive event
There are also traces of a non-Clovis, European? culture on the east coast that disappeared at the same time.
Their culture vanished due to peak flint stone.
There does not seem to be a huge gap between the Clovis culture and the Folsom. And many Clovis points do not have the enviable and aesthetic workmanship of the 2 points displayed above. The Folsom points are very similar, however the flute goes far up the point, making for a much more secure glue and tie connection with the shaft, if not nearly as deadly looking. . It seems an improvement.
“What sane civilization would abandon their most advanced technology?” Dude, we’re doing it right now here in the west!
I think that if the Clovis abandoned their points for some other style, you’d expect to see some evidence via intermediate forms.
I thought that they were named after the site where the first point was found.
The original site for Clovis appears to be France.
I presume that the extinction of the largest mammals, along with the Younger Dryas, convinced them to move elsewhere. The advent of migrations from Siberia, using bow and arrow technology may well have led to warfare as the skeleton found in the PNW a few years back may indicate.
What impact would a “nearby” exploding supernova have on earth?
A hint: supernova Vela exploded 11,000-12,300 years ago and was about 800 light years away.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_Supernova_Remnant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-Earth_supernova
“On average, a supernova explosion occurs within 10 parsecs of the Earth every 240 million years. Gamma rays are responsible for most of the adverse effects a supernova can have on a living terrestrial planet. In Earth’s case, gamma rays induce a chemical reaction in the upper atmosphere, converting molecular nitrogen into nitrogen oxides, depleting the ozone layer enough to expose the surface to harmful solar and cosmic radiation. Phytoplankton and reef communities would be particularly affected, which could badly deplete the base of the marine food chain.”
archaeologists say
FergalR says:
September 30, 2010 at 10:23 am
” What sane civilization would abandon their most advanced technology?”
Who said they were sane?
The Romans did exactly that when they adopted Christianity. During the reign of Emperor Constantine I, (early fourth century) Christianity became an official Roman religion. It soon became impossible to get a job in government if you were not a Christian. The Christians believed the only learning anyone needed could be found in the Bible and the writing of the early “Church Fathers”. Because of this ( in Justinian’s time 529 AD) they closed down the “pagan” schools that were found in every Roman town. From this period, the Roman Empire began to decline. People became less well educated. Skills were lost. There are of course other factors involved in the decline and fall but the deliberate abandoning of education as a result of a change in religion must have been devastating to the culture. 12,000 years from now the archeological evidence of this will be small.
The disappearance of the Clovis people may be similar. A new religion may have arisen that changed their world view and they simply stopped teaching the next generation how to knap flint. It is not always necessary to have a destruction event to destroy a culture.
12,000 something years ago.
Hmm…. where have I heard that number before?
Naw, it couldn’t be, correlation is not causation.
Silly Rabbit, younger dryas is for kids.
The Clovis type-site is in Clovis, New Mexico. It is not the oldest site associated with the culture, but was the first well documented and studied one. Just like Folsom is named for the site near the hamlet of Folsom in far northeastern New Mexico.
If you are ever in the area, the Lake Lubbock and Clovis/ Blackwater Draw sites are not that far apart (three hours drive?) and are worth visiting.
The Goshen cultural complex was contemporaneous with the late Clovis culture and continued for hundreds of years after Clovis was gone. It would be difficult explaining why a comet impact would have exterminated one group and not the other.
The comet impact conjecture was never anything more than a pipe dream.
So, that is what they believe. There are two sides to this issue. That is their side of it. 90% of archeology is extrapolation, anyway. They find two shards of pottery or one bone and tell us all about an entire society from that. As an applied scientist (mechanical engineer) I don’t even consider archeology as a science. It is history that leans on science. They don’t do their own C14 dating. They don’t do their own chemical analyses. And when C14 dates come back “out of range,” they reject them without examination as having been “obviously” contaminated. So, basically, they fudge their data. Where have we here hard that one before?
Anyone interested in the other side of this can visit sites that present the pro side of the issue. In order to get a fir and balanced view.
A recent study claiming that the nanodiamonds claimed to have been found at Y-D sites were in error were themselves in error. The graphane they found was in different layers, not the Y-D layer at all. The labs did the work correctly – they just weren’t given samples from the right layer. The claimed refutation of nanodiamonds was published on the same day that another paper was published reporting that nanodiamonds were found in Greenland – in the Y-D layer.
So, we are going to go around and around for quite while yet, while the defenders of the religio-scientific side attack the proponents of a new paradigm. The same thing happened 140 years ago to a guy named Darwin.
These people are defending the premise that a few thousand nearly naked guys running around on foot scoured the entire N American continent and killed ever last one of the hundreds of thousands of mammoth, sabre-toothed tiger and giant sloth (and 3 score more large mammalian species) – in a matter of a few centuries. What a joke.
And when someone comes along and offers a different and better explanation – with large amounts of evidence on many fronts – these people stop their own research and devote their time to slamming the new idea.
Oh – and these same people are the ones who fought tooth and nail for 7-1/2 decades, telling the world the Clovis-First doctrine over and over and killing careers of arkies who dared to show evidence to the contrary. Finally in 1997 the Clovis-First lie was overthrown, and there are still arkies out there that think the Clovis Barrier still exists.
They have made their entire careers based on Clovis this and Clovis that – and the last thing they want to see is the last Clovis claim to be repudiated.
Hence the vitriol and attacks, over and over and over again.
The evidence is clear: YES, there are nanodiamonds in the Y-D layer. That, plus the H3 and the Buckyballs, and all the other evidence – these people don’t want to know the truth. They just want to salvage their careers.
A cursory search found me this, which argues this study:
Cactus Hill is a Clovis site (one in which the McAvoys found pre-Clovis ONLY when they actually LOOKED under the Clovis layer) which is NOT
Of COURSE hunting sites – which are often random locations – will not turn up subsequent activity. But often enough they ARE repeated, because animals come to watering holes. Oh, Holliday didn’t mention THAT, did he? Because that is not “on message.”
But Cactus Hill is a settled, occupied site. I wonder why he didn’t mention it?
This abstract is only one of several out there that says just what the Y-D people are saying: Immediately after the Y-D layer, there ARE no Clovis hunters, there are no mammoths, there ARE no sabre-toothed tigers, there ARE no giant sloths. It is not ONE thing that is gone; it is ALL of those.
AND it is the start of a new ice age, much worse than the Little Ice Age.
AND there is that black mat, that these guys characterize their way and believe everyone will accept that judgment as the one and only one.
Firestone (the leading scientific proponent of the Y-D Impact Event) himself understands that much work needs to be done to find out what happened and was this event real or not.
But this paper is pretty ludicrous. It argues that the lack of evidence (in their reading of it) is sufficient to waylay the entire idea. That is weak, weak, weak.
At least the one last month about nano-diamonds had some substance, not a lack of substance.
This is an issue that will likely go on for quite a while. SOMETHING happened that caused the Younger-Dryas interstadial (ice age), which only lasted 1200 years, in the middle of a warm climate period. Something happened that killed the large NA mammals – ALL of them. Something caused Clovis man himself to disappear.
Pointing at the lack of evidence and reading into it something different – how is that adding to the discussion?
“ice age columbus”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/columbus.shtml
“Douglas Wallace’s DNA history bore fruit once more. In the DNA profile of the Ichigua Native American tribe he identified a lineage that was clearly European in origin, too old to be due to genetic mixing since Columbus’ discovery of the New World. Instead it dated to Solutrean times. Wallace’s genetic timelines show the Ice Age prompted a number of migrations from Europe to America. It looks highly likely that the Solutreans were one.”
Who said they died out
Ice age Columbus part 1/9
Ouch! a formatting error there. Too much bold at the end of that… Sorry!
I am embarrassed that that comment went so long.
But I found this that I need to interject, too:
A review of some attacks on the overkill hypothesis, with special attention to misrepresentations and doubletalk
Abstract
This paper addresses misrepresentations and errors in attacks directed against the Overkill hypothesis that was proposed by Paul
Martin to explain selective late Pleistocene extinctions. The opposing Climate-Change hypothesis to explain extinctions is driven by
ideology as much as by objective reasoning because it is repeated so frequently without strong new evidence to support it, but it has failed
to nail down a victory in public opinion. Overkill, which is not an anti-climate-change hypothesis, is perhaps too ‘‘flexible’’ to persuade
all scientists, especially because negative evidence (a lack of megafaunal killsites) is considered to be as corroborative as positive evidence.
Multiphase models of extinctions that propose different genera died out at different times have become less and less likely as more
radiometric dating is done, and overlook the documented variability in atmospheric radiocarbon around the end of the Pleistocene,
which prevents the high resolution chronology-building necessary to support a discontinuous model of the extinctions. The extinctions
were geologically abrupt, selective, and unique, and therefore they require unique explanations.
See? When it is used on their behalf (as in the new article) “negative evidence” is considered okay, but when the other side uses it (back in 1996), well that is a no-no.
Not quite the video I expected try this
Stone Age Columbus – Clovis & Solutrean Parallels – Part 1 of 4.avi