The Clovis Culture

The Clovis Culture

Archeologists have found sites all over North America that contain similar tools dating from a period about 12.000 years ago. The culture that developed these tools has been named Clovis after the site near Clovis, New Mexico, where the first tools of this sort were discovered in 1932. The tools are quite sophisticated and are unlike any tools that have been found in the Old World. In the years since the first tools of this sort were discovered in New Mexico, archeologists have discovered Clovis tools in areas ranging from Mexico to Montana in the United States and Nova Scotia in Canada. All of the Clovis finds date from approximately the same period, a fact which suggests that the Clovis spread rapidly throughout the North American continent.

From the evidence that has been discovered, archeologists have concluded that the Clovis were a mobile culture. They traveled in groups of forty to fifty individuals, migrating seasonally and returning to the same hunting camps each year. Their population increased rapidly as they spread out over the continent, and they were quite possibly motivated to develop their sophisticated hunting tools to feed their expanding populace.