Did the Pre-Clovis Cultures in America Originate from Japan?

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Mammoth hunt, Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Archaeology, Japan (CC BY-SA 2.5)

Did the Pre-Clovis Cultures in America Originate from Japan?

One of the most contentious issue in American, if not world archaeology is the validity of the ‘Clovis first’ theory, which is based on the argument that humans first came into America with the opening of a vast ice corridor running from north-west to south-east about 13,000 years ago. While this used to be the mainstream belief, trumping other fringe theories, a complete turnaround has just surfaced and the evidence of pre-Clovis habitation is now irrefutable. But who were these people and where did they come from?

Map of the Americas showing pre-Clovis sites, from the journal Science.  (Pratyeka / CC BY-SA 4.0)

Map of the Americas showing pre-Clovis sites, from the journal Science.  (Pratyeka / CC BY-SA 4.0)

Debunking Mainstream Clovis

A human-worked mammoth bone radiocarbon dated to 24,000 years ago has been recovered from Bluefish Caves in Yukon, Canada, and there is hard evidence of human activity at Meadowcroft in North America around 19,000 years ago. However, many archaeologists remain adamant that the earliest ‘reliably’ dated evidence of human habitation in the Americas are 11,500-year-old fluted projectile points found in Clovis, New Mexico; regarded as evidence of small groups of people spreading slowly across North America - the Clovis Culture.


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