Gompotheres
Posted on 01/26/2011 7:57:13 AM PST by Renfield
Mexican archaeologists found three projectile points from the Clovis culture, associated with remains of a Gomphotheres – a now extinct type of elephant - dating back at least 12,000 years, in northern Sonora. The find is of major importance, as this is the first evidence in North America that this animal was contemporary with early humans.
The location and date of these remains opens the possibility that in North America the Gomphotheres was still alive, in contrast with previous theories that suggest it had disappeared 30,000 years previously.
The finds were made in early January at the site of ‘World’s End’, in Sonora, Mexico, by researchers at the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), during a third season of excavations at a location that has been identified as an area for hunting and butchering of animals of the Pleistocene, discovered in 2007.
This recent discovery, completes a “scene” in which archaeologists can recognise a group of Clovis people hunting Proboscidean (ancestors of the elephant). This is an unprecedented find in Mexico as the first projectile points were found among the bones of the megafauna.
“It is very important because it is the first archaeological site of the Clovis culture to be associated with the remains of Gomphotheres whose remains have now been dated to between 11,600 and 10,600 years.” said Guadalupe Sanchez, archaeologist, director of the Research Project End of the World.
The discovery occurred in the same archaeological context where articulated bones from Gomphotheres and various stone tools, including a Clovis point quartz crystal were recovered in 2008.
Clovis people are known as Mammoth hunters, one of the three species of Proboscidea that inhabited America, the other two being the Mastodon and Gomphotheres . Of the three species, the latter is the smallest and oldest in the Americas.
The Gomphotheres had only been found previously in association with man in South America, while in Costa Rica (Central America), the evidence of association between humans is limited to the behemoth Proboscidean and the Mammoth.
INAH archaeologist Natalia Martinez, who led the research in the field, explained that the Clovis points were found in a place called Town 1 (the remnant of a marsh deposits of Pleistocene eras Terminal / Early Holocene), at a depth of 1.5 metres.
These ancient stone artefacts that were produced by the Clovis to hunt large animals, were located a few inches below Gomphotheres bones, discovered in the two previous excavation seasons in the winter of 2007 and autumn 2008 as part of the research project jointly developed the INAH, the University of Arizona and National Geographic Society.
The projectile points are made of flint – two of the points are complete and the other is only the tip of the projectile.
Sanchez comments that, “This perfectly recreates the scene of the hunt, with the tip left at the scene of the attack in the butchered carcass.
The previous Clovis material was too small and fragmented to prove the animals were being hunted, but this find confirms they were. The points are similar to ones found in Rio San Pedro in Arizona, dated to the same time period.
“The C14 sample taken was very small and so the dating error ranges from plus or minus 500 years, which gives an approximate age of 10,700 years, coinciding with the Clovis occupation America” said Sanchez.
Besides finding these spear points, Sanchez said that some 500 metres from the site they found a Clovis camp with series of objects including flints and blades.
Gompotheres
Paleolithic Ping.
Maybe the headline should read “Clovis Find Reveals Gompotheres Hunted Humans in North Amercia”.
Anything about how between these EVIL humans causing ‘GOBULL Warming’ and their brutal and cruel hunting that they drove the poor Gompotheres into extinction?
What is that critter?
I don’t know, but it’s huge and serious.
We hunt all kinds of stuff out here.
That IS one of the theories. Dozens of species of (mostly) large mammals went extinct in the Americas in a very brief period right after the end of the last ice age. This is the period when one of the theories has humans first entering this hemisphere.
The theory has become somewhat un-PC recently, as it requires pinning the blame for one of the greatest extinctions of all time on the ancestors of today's native Americans. Can't have that.
There are other theories for the mass extinction, but it is a remarkable chronological coincidence if something else caused it.
Certainly ver similar extinctions occurred in New Zealand, Madagascar and elsewhere. But the Americas are a very large place and I personally find it difficult to envision a massive enough population of hunters to cause this.
I also have always found it improbable that a huge hunting group killed off the big animals. I say it was disease. These animals were isolated in the icy cold. Then it got warm and other animals from further south moved into previously glaciated North America bringing their diseases with them. Kind of like white man and measles.
My hypothesis on the extinction of the megafauna:
1. Clovis points are fluted. It can take several days to make a single spearpoint. Chipping out the concave channel takes a lot of time and effort, so there had to be a fairly good reason and big payoff for the effort. However, the flutes are perfect for adding poison to the spear point. Examples of readily available poisons are aconitine from monks hood flowers and nicotine from tobacco. For example, the Aleuts used aconitine to kill whales with harpoons launched from kayaks.
2. With an atlatl, a man can throw a dart about 100 yards, but not with the same accuracy as a bow launches an arrow. A single hunter could stalk and launch his poison-laden dart or a group could launch a volley. Killing a single mammoth or giant bison could provide food for a large group for days. The use of atlatls against herds of megafauna would provide a payoff that would justify the effort that goes into a Clovis point. Megafauna herds are easy to track. A hunting group could follow a herd until they had killed the last animal. Abundant food with few hunting fatalities would cause a human population explosion.
3. After the megafauna became extinct, the hunters had to learn new techniques to go after deer, elk, etc. Clovis points would not be worth the effort.
4. The transfer of this knowledge and hunting technique worldwide led to rapid extinction of megafauna over a period of a few thousand years.
I came up with the hypothesis when I considered that they only made Clovis points for a time and then they went back to making easier spear points. Of course, the fluting helps in attaching the point to a shaft. However, there is no sign that they had too much trouble attaching later points to the shaft either.
They could test my hypothesis by looking for toxins in the flutes. Maybe a few molecules remain.
I still think that Clovis points had something to do with the extinction of the megafauna. There is certainly a temporal connection.
As for the disease hypothesis, it would be unusual if one parasite or pathogen wiped out multiple species.
Some problems with your ideas. Animals went extinct throughout the Americas, including almost all large mammals in South America, not just those who lived on the fringes of the glaciers.
Also these species had survived a number of previous ice age to interglacial movement over hundreds of thousands of years without going extinct.
Similar species in Eurasia did not go extinct when the interglacial hit.
There is no obvious answer to this, but I find it very intriguing.
In particular, there is some, though by no means conclusive, evidence that humans were present in the New World many thousands of years before this, as much as 10,000 years earlier or perhaps even more.
No doubt that the Clovis point hastened the demise. It is just counter intuitive to consider large blades and poison when poison generally negated the need for initial stopping power.
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I like that poison in the flute clovis point theory.
I’m sure the nomads learned real quick that a normal spear in the butt of a mammoth can get you killed. Experimenting with poisons eventually led to the fact that you need a lot of poison to take down the big dinner, which lead to the invention of the clovis point with the poison reservior. We’ll probably never know the thought process and progression of inventions that led to the clovis point.
And not just elephants, early man had to clear the caves of giant bears and sloths. Everyone wanted the cave. I can see the poison spear being the necessary weapon for giant bears!
One gram of aconitine i.m. will stop a grizzly bear before he can run 100 yards. Just imagine, the Aleuts killed 40 ton whales with less than that; it just took a few hours.
I read that aconitine is so powerful, handling the roots of monkshood flowers will make your hands go numb as a tiny amount of the poison is absorbed through the skin. BTW, monkshood is common throughout the entire Northern Hemisphere in arctic and alpine regions. So it would have been available in Asia and Europe as well.
As the Aleuts found, the problem with using these poisons is that entire villages sometimes got sick from eating the whale meat. That’s why most Indians did not use poison arrows to kill deer, elk, etc. In South America the Indians had curare which is destroyed by cooking making the meat safe to eat. Same with poison arrow frogs for Central Americans.
How did our ancestors discover edible plants from among the millions of species? Imagine the shaman, high on mushrooms, telling Oog, his least favorite relative, “Oog, I had a dream. You must dig up that plant, cook it, and eat the roots.” After Oog’s unfortunate demise, the shaman tells the people, “Oog angered the gods”.
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