 A mastodon rib with an embedded bone spear tip: (a) closeup view; (b) reconstruction showing the bone point with the broken tip (the thin layer represents the exterior of the rib); (c) CT scan; (d) the entire rib fragment. Photograph: University of Copenhagen/PA
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PULLMAN, Wash. – It has been 35 years since Carl Gustafson rubbed his thumb on a mastodon rib near Sequim and felt a bony projectile tip that pointed to the existence of people in North America before the Clovis some 13,000 years ago.
It was an extraordinary finding with extraordinary implications – and it called for extraordinary proof. This week’s journal Science takes a big step in that direction: Researchers say they have dated the rib to 13,800 years ago – 800 years earlier than Clovis, who until now were believed to be the earliest documented inhabitants of the continent.
“I’m pretty excited and it’s hard to get me excited about anything,” said Gustafson, 75, who retired from Washington State University in 1998. “It’s going to be really interesting to see what our colleagues have to say about it.”
Mass spectrometry and CT scans
Soon after the bone was found on the property of Emanuel Manis in 1977, Gustafson used radiocarbon dating to estimate it was 14,000 years old.
“The only thing that made sense to me was that the animal had been killed by people and it had been butchered,” he said.
But other archeologists questioned its age and whether it was possible to have an archeological site without the stone tools associated with Clovis people and later groups.
In the Science paper, researchers led by Michael Waters of the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M University say they used more than a dozen accelerator mass spectrometry readings to date the mastodon rib and tusks found nearby. All the dates were statistically identical.
A CT scan showed the projectile was shaped to a point and DNA analysis found it was made from another mastodon.
“The Manis site provides further evidence of a human presence in the New World 800 years before Clovis,” the authors write, “and shows that people were hunting with mastodon bone weapons made from earlier kills.”
Evidence mounting
The finding is an example of “science in action,” said Andrew Duff, chair of the WSU Department of Anthropology, who teaches about Clovis and pre-Clovis people in his undergraduate courses. “As evidence changes, we have to change what we think.”
“We’re getting mounting evidence for pre-Clovis dates and sites from all over the continent,” he said. “We’re at the point of overturning previously held ideas. They’re gaining increasing acceptance, especially as evidence is accumulating from over the past decade or so.”
Word of the paper started creating a buzz in Northwest archeological circles even before it was published. A mention of it on the website of the Center for the Study of the First Americans was spotted by the Web blog Northwest Coast Archaeology earlier this month, prompting University of Victoria anthropologist Quentin Mackie to say, “the implications are enormous.”
“It’s a major game-changer in how we think about the first peopling of the Americas,” he wrote, “and about the roots of NW Coast archaeology and the ancient presence of First Nations people in the Salish Sea.”
Source contact:
Carl Gustafson, Washington State University Professor Emeritus, 509-332-1146, cgus1936@gmail.com
Carl Gustafson, Washington State University Professor Emeritus, 509-332-1146, cgus1936@gmail.com