13,000 Years Ago, The Clovis People Actually Settled In The Great Lakes Region And Returned To A Michigan Campsite Every Summer For Up To Five Years In A Row
About 13,000 years ago, people from the Clovis period settled in the Great Lakes region and returned to a campsite in southwest Michigan for several consecutive years, according to a new study. Until now, there had been no evidence that Clovis people settled in the Great Lakes region.
The Clovis people appeared in North America during the Pleistocene epoch, when much of the world, including the area we now know as Michigan, was covered with sheets of glaciers. The land was thought to be too harsh for humans to settle in.
However, a 2021 study conducted by researchers from the University of Michigan determined that Clovis people built a camp in Mendon, Michigan, called the Belson site.
The same researchers have now confirmed that Clovis people traveled to the site every summer for three to five years in a row. Additionally, tools from the site show evidence of a diverse diet.
The research team discovered tools at the Belson site that were made with a type of stone known as chert.
The stone is from what is now western Kentucky, which is 400 miles away from the campsite. The tools were resharpened at the camp, leaving behind fragments for the team to analyze.
They learned that the tools were created in Kentucky and traded to people in central Indiana, who then brought them to the Belson site.
The people who settled there most likely moved to the camp during the summers and lived in central Indiana during the winter.
They probably traded for the tools with people who moved from central Indiana to Kentucky on a yearly basis.
Kenneth Keifer – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only
“In this way, people formed ‘links in a chain’ with yearly routes that likely connected the whole continent, from Michigan to Mexico,” said Brendan Nash, the lead author of the study and a doctoral student of archaeology.
“This is likely why technology from the Clovis period is so similar throughout most of North America.”
The Clovis period is characterized by spear points with central channels called flutes, which run through the length of the points.
The channel was used to attach a shaft to the spearhead, creating a weapon capable of hunting prey of all sizes.
The first Clovis spear point was found in 2008 on the Belson farm field. It led to the discovery of the stone’s origins.
At the site, dozens of other tools were also unburied from beneath the plowed field. They were examined for traces of protein.
The researchers detected evidence of musk, ox, hare, deer or caribou, and peccary—an ancient relative of the pig.
“Taken together, the ancient protein data suggests that these people had a broad spectrum diet, eating a wide variety of animals,” said Nash.
“Our findings are contrary to the popular notion that Clovis people were strictly big game hunters, most often subsisting on mammoths and mastodons.”
Overall, the findings have taught the researchers about a long-lost lifestyle and revealed the travel routes that were taken across the American Midwest during the Pleistocene era.
The results of the recent study were published in PLOS One.
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