September 2011, Discoveries

Mastodon Kill Site Shows Human Presence in North America Before 13,000 Years Ago

By Dan McLerran   Thu, Oct 20, 2011

Based on new dating results, the tip of a bone point lodged within the rib bone of a mastodon excavated in the 1970's near Manis, Washington, turns out to be about 13,800 years old, say scientists. The finding suggests that hunters who killed the mastodon likely lived in North America before the traditionally accepted dawn of the "Clovis" culture, thought previously by many scientists to be the earliest human culture established on the continent.

Dr. Carl Gustafson of Washington State University (pictured on the right in photo below), the initial excavator of the mastodon remains more than three decades ago, concluded from radiocarbon dating of charcoal deposits around the remains that it was about 14,000 years old, a conclusion that has been a subject of considerable debate among scholarly critics. Also controversial was his suggestion that the bone point found embedded in the rib bone was an early projectile point, similar to other bone projectile points found at other Paleo-indian sites.   

The case was revisited recently when Dr. Michael Waters of Texas A & M University (pictured on the left in photo, right), along with a team of colleagues, used mass spectrometry to date carbon in samples of bone from the rib, a pair of tusks found at the same site, and the embedded point.  Results indicated that all of the fossils tested were about 13,800 years old. They also used high-resolution X-ray CT scanning of the embedded bone point to produce a three-dimensional visual study or image. Based on this, they determined that the point was likely at least 27 centimeters long, similar in length to those of later, Clovis-age projectile points that were used in throwing or thrusting weapons made by Paleolithic hunters of North America. Moreover, the team examined the specimen using DNA protein analysis of material from the bone point and the rib in which it was embedded. They concluded that the point itself was fashioned from mastodon bone.  "What that told us", says Waters, "was that these people [who] killed this particular (Manis) mastodon must have killed at least one other mastodon to harvest the bone to make a tool, or at least scavenged some bone from another mastodon to make a tool." [1]

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Graphical reconstruction of Mammut americanum (mastodon) based on bony structure and paleontological texts. Sergiodlarosa  Wikimedia Commons

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This is a mastodon skeleton and outline of a mastodon. The location of the rib and approximate angle of the spear is indicated. The point had to penetrate 25-30 cm of hide, tissue, and muscle. [Image courtesy of Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A&M University]

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Manis specimen. This image is a close-up view of the bone point fragment that is embedded into the mastodon rib. [Image courtesy of Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A&M University]

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A 3-D reconstruction. The flat layer going across the picture is the edge of the bone. The exterior is above this line and the interior is below the line. You can clearly see the bone point that penetrates into the rib. It has been sharpened to a point. The tip of the point broke off after impact and rotated a bit. You can also see how some of the bone point failed and scissored. [Image courtesy of Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A&M University]

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Mastodon rib with the embedded bone projectile point. (A) Closeup view. (B) Reconstruction showing the bone point with the broken tip. The thin layer represents the exterior of the rib. (C) CT x-ray showing the long shaft of the point from the exterior to the interior of the rib. (D) The entire rib fragment with the embedded bone projectile point. [Image courtesy of Science/AAAS]

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Most significantly, the findings constitute more evidence that Paleo-Indians settled the americas before 13,000 B.P.E., the earliest date that has traditionally been assigned to the emergence of the "Clovis" cultural horizon. The "Clovis" culture is originally derived from archaeological discoveries in the late 1930's at a site near Clovis, New Mexico, where a distinct bifacial, fluted stone projectile point artifact type (pictured left) was found and which became a common find among numerous archaeological sites throughout the American continent. Clovis marked the first presence of humans in North America and was considered ancestral to all Native Americans. Additionally, it has been suggested by some scientists that the hunting practices of the Clovis people may have played a salient role in the extinction of the mastodon, along with other large mammals that roamed North America. 

But that theory, popularly known in the scientific world as "Clovis First", has been challenged in recent years by new finds. Among the new discoveries were those of Eske Willerslev, a key lead researcher with Waters on the Manis mastodon study. He conducted Carbon-14 dating and DNA analysis on human remains found in caves in the state of Oregon and concluded that these traces of humans in North America were approximately 14,340 years old. Maintains Willerslev, "our research now shows that other hunters were present at least 1,000 years prior to the Clovis culture. Therefore, it was not a sudden war or a quick slaughtering of the mastodons by the Clovis culture, which made the species disappear. We can now conclude that the hunt for the animals stretched out over a much longer period of time. At this time, however, we do not know if it was the man-made hunt for the mastodons, mammoths and other large animals from the so-called mega-fauna, which caused them to become extinct and disappear. Maybe the reason was something complete different, for instance the climate."

Whether or not the Oregon finds and those at Manis, Washington can be correlated in terms of a new theory on early Paleo-Indians in North America and the extinction of the mastodon, the latest research on the Manis mastodon does open an additional window of consideration on the presence of humans on the American continent.  

Says Waters,  "We're looking at another pre-Clovis locality in North America where, in this case, bone weaponry was used to hunt mastodons 800 years before Clovis stone weaponry show up on the landscape." [1]

More detailed information about the findings can be obtained from the scientific report published in the October 21, 2011 edition of the journal Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a non-profit scientific and educational organization.  Article: "Pre-Clovis Mastodon Hunting 13,800 Years Ago at the Manis Site, Washington," by M.R. Waters at Texas A&M University in College Station, TX; T.W. Stafford Jr. at Stafford Research in Lafayette, CO; H.G. McDonald at National Park Service in Fort Collins, CO; C. Gustafson at in Pullman, WA; T.W. Stafford Jr.; M. Rasmussen; E. Cappellini; J.V. Olsen; D. Szklarczyk; L.J. Jensen; M.T.P. Gilbert; E. Willerslev at University of Copenhagen in Copenhagen, Denmark.

[1] Interview of Michael R. Waters by the AAAS, produced by the AAAS Office of Public Programs. 

Cover Photo, Above Left: Mastodon Mammut americanum  Dantheman9758, Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Photo, second from top, right: Drs. Michael Waters and Carl Gustafson.[Image courtesy of Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A&M University]

Photo, bottom left: A typical Clovis point. Locutus Borg, Wikimedia Commons

By Dan McLerran

As Founder and Editor of Popular Archaeology Magazine, Dan is a freelance writer and journalist specializing in archaeology.  He studied anthropology and archaeology in undergraduate and graduate school and has been an active participant on archaeological excavations in the U.S. and abroad.  He is the creator and administrator of Archaeological Digs, a popular weblog about archaeological excavation and field school opportunities.  

Comments(1):

1. bone point insertion

   Friday, October 21, 2011 Bill

   From looking at the x-ray, the point of insertion looks like it was either an unusually thick spot that (serendipitously) was the same shape as the projectile, or had healed around the projectile afterward. It's possible that it wasn't associated with the kill unless it caused perhaps a spine infection that slowed the mastodon to make it an easier kill later on. Another possibility might be that the beast was rolling in a dust bath, and got jabbed by a piece of bone laying on the ground. Elephants are too big to roll but horses and rhinos do, Mastodons are smaller than Elephants.