June 5, 2007 — Like a popcorn trail left by hikers, stone arrowhead-type points map how and where prehistoric Native Americans first entered North America and the manner in which they populated the rest of the continent, according to a new study.
By analyzing the so-called Clovis points the same way other scientists use morphological or genetic data to track the dispersal of species, researchers Briggs Buchanan and Mark Collard determined the first Native Americans came from the North.
"More specifically, the data supports an entry in the Northern Plains, close to where the southern opening of the ice-free corridor would have been," Buchanan, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, told Discovery News.
He and Collard therefore think the study results "point toward an Asian origin of the Paleo-Indians."
The iceless corridor is thought to have opened around 12,000 years ago between two ancient ice sheets near the Great Plains. Prior to their trek to the Plains, hunter-gatherer groups are believed to have migrated to North America via a landmass between Siberia and Alaska that was exposed by falling sea levels during glacial intervals.
The study included 216 stone points found in a number of states, including Montana, New Mexico, Arizona, Maine and Texas.
The researchers analyzed variations in angles, base size, tips, stone flaking and more. They then studied how the differences, and similarities, related to where the objects were excavated.
Their findings have been accepted for publication in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology.
"The underlying idea is that a Paleo-Indian population, let's call it Population A, arrives in North America," Buchanan explained. "It expands and then a population buds off from it. This new population, which we will call Population B, disperses into a new area and then produces projectile points that differ from those created by Population A."
