Since the 1930s, many archeologists have thought that the Clovis
culture (prehistoric Paleo-Indian) was the first group of people
to inhabit the Americas, where it expanded rapidly roughly
12,800 to 13,100 years ago. In more recent years, scientists
have found increasing evidence of even earlier inhabitants.
However, the notion of pre-Clovis culture in the Americas is
highly controversial, as supporting evidence has been sparse and
scattered. New archaeological findings in central Texas might
lessen some of that controversy. Michael Waters and his
collaborators report in Science that they have found 15,528
artifacts from a pre-Clovis culture that dates back 13,200 to
15,500 years. Waters and his team found the large collection of
artifacts under a layer of Clovis objects at the Debra L.
Friedkin site near Buttermilk Creek. They dated the minerals in
the artifacts using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL);
they couldn’t use radiocarbon dating because the artifacts
lacked organic material. The pre-Clovis ar