COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS—According to a Science News report, spear points made some 15,500 years ago have been discovered at the Debra L. Friedkin archaeological site in central Texas, underneath a stratigraphic layer containing Clovis and Folsom projectile points. Long thought to have been made by the first people to have arrived in the Americas, Clovis tools, marked by their long, triangular shape, date to around 13,000 years ago. Michael Waters of Texas A&M University said the 12 spear points, found among 100,000 stone artifacts at the Friedkin site, span a 2,000-year period and suggest a progression from stemmed points, to short, triangular-shaped points, to the Clovis style. Eleven of the weapons were chipped into leaf shapes with slightly narrower stems. Points similar to these have been unearthed in other areas of the western United States and dated to the pre-Clovis period, but archaeologists had not been able to show a progression from the earlier, leaf-shaped points to Clovis-style points before now. However, the twelfth point from the Friedkin site, which dates to between 14,000 and 13,500 years ago, is short and triangular with a flat base. Waters believes that this blade could have been developed by the descendants of the earlier weapons makers, or it may have been introduced by migrants who moved inland from the Pacific coast, or through an ice-free corridor. To read in-depth about the search for evidence of the first Americans, go to “America, in the Beginning.”
