Was Clovis Man the first American?

Editor’s note: Jack Baker is the editor of Caprock Chronicles and Librarian Emeritus, Texas Tech University Libraries. He can be reached at [email protected] Today’s article on the First Americans was written by frequent contributor Chuck Lenhart, award-winning Lubbock attorney and Western history writer.

For nearly a century, artifacts found near Clovis, New Mexico, were accepted as evidence that the first American was the Clovis Man, who once thrived on Llano Estacado. However, a recent discovery suggests that early humans may have lived nearby, prompting debate about when and how they got there.

In 1927, a cowboy found a huge skeleton with a spear-head in its ribs near Folsom, New Mexico, sparking interest in digging for evidence of early humans in the area. Five years later, excavations 200 miles south at Blackwater Drew near Clovis discovered ballistic points and tools that support the theory that early humans crossed the Bering land bridge over the Bering Strait from Siberia to Alaska during the last ice age maximum, a period of lower sea levels. during the Ice Age. Ancient travelers may have made their way south through an ice-free corridor east of the Rocky Mountains in present-day western Canada as the glaciers retreated.