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One of the 15,000 year old spearheads discovered in Texas.
Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A & M University
Texas researchers have discovered what they thought were spearheads used by human hunters 15,500 years ago, making them the oldest weapons ever discovered in North America.
The newly discovered spear points predate the first known weapons made by the The Clovis, who, in the opinion of archaeologists, were the first humans to settle in America about 13,000 years ago.
The Texas A & M research team, Baylor University and the University of Texas discovered the discovery at an archaeological site about 40 km northwest of Austin, the Debra L. Friedkin site. , from the name of the family owning the land. Excavations on the site have been going on for more than ten years.
Excavations on the site of Debra L. Friedkin in 2016.
Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A & M University
The researchers found many spearheads made of chert, a type of rock, as well as other tools, buried in layers of sediment whose dating revealed that they dated at least 15,500 years old. Unlike spear-shaped stone weapons, known as "Clovis spikes", which were discovered in Texas, as well as in other parts of the United States and northern Mexico, and date back to the beginning. 12 700 to 13 000 years ago, these old "western stem" spears are smaller, without the distinctive Clovis grooves.
"The discovery is significant because almost all sites prior to Clovis have stone tools, but there are still spearheads," said Michael Waters, professor of anthropology at Texas A & M, said in a statement. "The dream has always been to find diagnostic artifacts, such as projectile points, which can be recognized as being older than Clovis, and that's what we have on Friedkin's site."
Waters and his team believe that early Americans used these spearheads to hunt mammoths and other large animals wandering into the current center of Texas more than 15,000 years ago. Their discoveries, published in the journal Progress of science, can force scientists to rethink the accepted wisdom about human settlements in North America – again.
A lanceolate projectile tip, dating back about 15,000 years.
Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A & M University
Archaeologists have long believed that the first humans to settle on the American continent did so about 13,000 years ago, walking from Alaska through an ice-free corridor in Western Canada before heading for South. But the discovery of the Monte Verde colony in southern Chile, which dates back at least 14,500 years, was part of this theory, because at that time the ice-free road that crossed Canada did not exist.
The new Texas discovery could also help rewrite the long-accepted chronology and potentially support the assumption that the first Americans may have arrived not on the ground, but by sea, entering different parts of the coast Pacific.
"The results broaden our understanding of the first peoples to explore and settle in North America," said Waters. "The settlement of the Americas at the end of the last ice age was a complex process and this complexity is visible in their genetic records. We are now beginning to see this complexity reflected in the archaeological archives. "
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