Study: Clovis-era humans not first to settle America

For decades, the Blackwater Draw archaeological site near Clovis, N.M., stood out as perhaps the earliest documented evidence of human habitation in North America.

It was here that a band of Clovis-era humans hunted, killed and butchered at least one woolly mammoth. They also left behind distinctive Clovis spear points, lodged inside ancient bones.

Most archaeologists have believed for years that small bands of humans skirted ice sheets across the Bering Straits, made their way to North America and scattered to places like Blackwater Draw.

But a new archeological study suggests the Clovis-era peoples weren't the first in the Americas. The study, "Redefining the Age of Clovis: Implications for the Peopling of the Americas," was published in the Feb. 23 issue of Science.

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