Paleoindians: The First Americans

            The first people in Utah were Paleoindian hunter-gatherers who used atlatls and large stone-tipped darts, and spears. Between 11,500 and 9,000 years ago they hunted a wide variety of animals, including now extinct forms of mammoths and bison. However, new studies indicate they mainly hunted smaller local game, such as deer, antelope and rabbits in Utah, occasionally scoring a large-bodied animal like the Huntington Mammoth, or sometimes scavenging those animals that were struggling to survive with the changing climate. No houses were built at this time, and these people were probably highly mobile, living at short-term, open air camps. There are many different types of Paleoindian tools, but some of the most well-known are:

 

            Clovis- large fluted projectile points found in association with mammoths at some           sites, dated to ca. 11,500 to 11,000 years ago.

 

            Folsom- large fluted projectile points found in association with extinct bison at    some sites, dated to ca. 10,800 to 10,500 years ago.

 

            Today some archaeologists think there may have been a "Pre-Clovis" Paleoindian culture-- a group of people who migrated to the New World via a coastal route around 14,000 years ago or earlier. These people would also have originated in Siberia and moved south from Alaska along the Pacific Coast. Although this hypothesis is certainly worth considering, so far the best supporting evidence comes from a handful of sites in South America, with no known sites in Alaska or along the North American coast.