Emily Chan
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.
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