had by then been found in Texas and as far east as the Mis-
sissippi, these roughly 11,000-year-old hunting artifacts were
attributed to a general “Clovis culture,” suggesting the pri-
macy of Clovis as the oldest site.
FROM THE ROCKIES TO THE ANDES
It is unlikely that the Clovis culture was a “mother culture”
to all the Americas. Th e fi rst settlers who came through the
break in the Canadian ice barrier may not all have settled
fi rst in New Mexico or even in the western part of North
America. Some may have immediately started migrating
southeast, going all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Some may
have gone directly south, right past New Mexico, to settle
in Central America. Others may have followed opportunity
or comfortable weather all the way to present-day Colombia
and Venezuela or to Peru and Bolivia. Th is would explain
the apparent antiquity of some South American sites, many
of which seem to have arisen at the same time as the Clovis
culture or even before. While controversy surrounds many
of the Paleo-Indian sites in Latin America (for excavations
there have oft en been done by Europeans and Latin Ameri-
cans using techniques not always accepted by North Ameri-
can scientists), the site at Monte Verde in Chile seems to be
older than Clovis.
Several layers, or strata, of artifacts at Monte Verde con-
tain wood and stone tools; the remains of hutlike dwellings;
and the fruits, plants, and meat that were eaten in them. In
the archaeological practice of stratigraphy, excavation pro-
ceeds from the upper strata, or layers, of soil to the lower,
with the assumption that objects buried deeper in the soil
are older. Radiocarbon testing oft en bears this assumption
out, but sometimes earth movements and water or wind
erosion can jumble the contents of the soil deposits. Th ese
shift s can complicate the stratigraphic record and corrupt
the carbon content of the site, rendering radiocarbon dat-
ing unreliable or useless. Monte Verde’s location near both
a river and a damp bog casts doubts on the carbon test re-
sults, which state that the upper level of artifacts is 12,500
years old and that an even lower stratum of artifacts is some
33,000 years old.
While the age of the lower strata (which may have been
corrupted by water action or other agents) is in doubt, the
artifacts dated to 12,500 years ago are probably that old. If
this theory is correct, then Monte Verde is 1,000 years older
than Clovis. Sites such as Pikimachay in Peru and Taima-
taima in Venezuela and many other South American sites
have also yielded stone tools and butchered animal bones.
From their technology and materials these sites seem to be
of the same approximate age as Clovis and Monte Verde,
but like the latter site, they suff er from dubious stratigraphic
evidence whereby doubt is cast on their radiocarbon dates.
It is noteworthy that a great many South American sites,
excavated by unaffi liated archaeologists in the past 30 years,
tend to yield radiocarbon dates between 13,400 and 14,200
years ago. If the age of any of these sites proves to be incon-
testable, then South America will have the oldest proven Pa-
leo-Indian site. Older South American dates could establish
that Paleo-Indians emerging from Canada’s ice-free corri-
dor headed straight for the south. If this were the case, com-
munities in South America could have emerged virtually
simultaneously with their Clovis counterparts up north, or
even earlier.
Far from the controversy of South America’s radiocar-
bon dates are archaeologists who see that hunter-gatherers
from just south of the Canadian ice sheets could indeed have
settled the entire length of the Americas in a single millen-
nium. Computer models and comparisons to the movements
of historic marooned populations indicate that with oppor-
tunistic migration (say, in the pursuit of food sources) and
even conservative population growth, Indians could have
expanded from Canada to Chile within 100 generations. It
seems that once ancient Siberians crossed into the Americas,
their settlement of the new landmasses, even with any delay
caused by the gradually receding Canadian ice sheets, was re-
markably fast.FROM THE AMAZON TO THE CARIBBEAN
Th e vast majority of early Paleo-Indian sites are concentrated
along the Pacifi c side of the Americas. Th is may be more than
circumstantial evidence. Paleo-Indians seemed to have mi-
grated along the base of the North American Rockies and
then the Mexican Sierras and the Andes, hunting on the
wide-open plains but within sight of the sheltering moun-
tains. Th eir eastward expansion into the North American
Woodlands and the South American Amazon may be ob-
scured by the environment itself, tangling the stratigraphic
evidence in vegetal undergrowth. However, it may simply
be that Paleo-Indians spent much of their early prehistory
nearer the western longitudes and open spaces to which they
had grown accustomed in their early migration. Either way,
most Paleo-Indians seem to have kept the rising sun to their
left during their early expansion.
In South America a change in the overall southward
migration pattern also marked a change in lifestyle from al-
most exclusively hunting and gathering to partial and then
full agricultural settlement. Th is agrarian phase, which com-
menced in diff erent regions between 5,000 and 10,000 years
ago, was an important shift in Native American culture.
Some anthropologists cease referring to these agrarians as
Paleo-Indians, choosing instead to describe them as archaic
cultures. Th ree patterns of migration signal the archaic shift :
the exploration of the coastlines in search of diversifi ed food
sources (for example, the addition of fi sh and shellfi sh to the
regular diet), the absolute cessation of migration aft er phased
adaptations to agriculture, and fi nally a movement into the
Amazon forests aft er developing a certain familiarity with its
environment.
Prearchaic Paleo-Indians would have had little incentive
to settle in the Amazon forests, since their quarries as hunters
were large, migratory animals that favored open landscapes.migration and population movements: The Americas 721