Dan Flores

Sites of Clovis Age in southern Alberta and Colorado show horse and camel kills, but nothing like the vast number of horses from solutrean sites in Europe. And why did various camelids survive in South America, providing later native people domestic possibilities, but not farther north? As for the Clovisians themselves, they remain maddeningly elusive.

They are us, of course, but it's difficult even to know your recent relatives if all you have to go on are their tools and diet preferences. We know that with the fluted point, a purely American invention not found in Siberia, their thinkers had solved the ancient technology hurdle of affixing points solidly to wooden spears or darts.

They are us, of course, but it's difficult even to know your recent relatives if all you have to go on are their tools and diet preferences. We know that with the fluted point, a purely American invention not found in Siberia, their thinkers had solved the ancient technology hurdle of affixing points solidly to wooden spears or darts.

They are us, of course, but it's difficult even to know your recent relatives if all you have to go on are their tools and diet preferences. We know that with the fluted point, a purely American invention not found in Siberia, their thinkers had solved the ancient technology hurdle of affixing points solidly to wooden spears or darts.

We also know that they were consumer connoisseurs of the best the world had to offer. Clovis artisans fashioned their toolkit from the hardest, sharpest, most vividly colored flints and shirts in North America, whose outcrops existed as a geographic atlas in their heads. They journeyed hundreds of miles to those sources, as if on quest to special magic.

We also know that they were consumer connoisseurs of the best the world had to offer. Clovis artisans fashioned their toolkit from the hardest, sharpest, most vividly colored flints and shirts in North America, whose outcrops existed as a geographic atlas in their heads. They journeyed hundreds of miles to those sources, as if on quest to special magic.

We also know that they were consumer connoisseurs of the best the world had to offer. Clovis artisans fashioned their toolkit from the hardest, sharpest, most vividly colored flints and shirts in North America, whose outcrops existed as a geographic atlas in their heads. They journeyed hundreds of miles to those sources, as if on quest to special magic.

Some of their tool caches featured multiple gorgeous unused points of eight to nine inches in leek with sacred red ochre still adhering to them. One Clovis mystery has always been, why no art? Why nothing like the grand paintings of animals on the cave walls of Chauvet, Lascaux, and Altamira in Europe? There are pebbles in size with crosshatching. There's an elephant carved into a piece of ivory.

Some of their tool caches featured multiple gorgeous unused points of eight to nine inches in leek with sacred red ochre still adhering to them. One Clovis mystery has always been, why no art? Why nothing like the grand paintings of animals on the cave walls of Chauvet, Lascaux, and Altamira in Europe? There are pebbles in size with crosshatching. There's an elephant carved into a piece of ivory.

Some of their tool caches featured multiple gorgeous unused points of eight to nine inches in leek with sacred red ochre still adhering to them. One Clovis mystery has always been, why no art? Why nothing like the grand paintings of animals on the cave walls of Chauvet, Lascaux, and Altamira in Europe? There are pebbles in size with crosshatching. There's an elephant carved into a piece of ivory.

Otherwise, we had no hints what they thought of the animals they hunted, of America, of their lives in general. That may be changing with a new 2019 to 2020 investigation of the rock art of a region in the Colombian Amazon known as Serrania La Lindosa. But we'll have to wait to see if the images there really are Clovis or Folsom ones.

Otherwise, we had no hints what they thought of the animals they hunted, of America, of their lives in general. That may be changing with a new 2019 to 2020 investigation of the rock art of a region in the Colombian Amazon known as Serrania La Lindosa. But we'll have to wait to see if the images there really are Clovis or Folsom ones.

Otherwise, we had no hints what they thought of the animals they hunted, of America, of their lives in general. That may be changing with a new 2019 to 2020 investigation of the rock art of a region in the Colombian Amazon known as Serrania La Lindosa. But we'll have to wait to see if the images there really are Clovis or Folsom ones.

One recent theory is that the Clovisians may have been a northern hemisphere wild type, a group of hyper-aggressive Siberian Vikings. According to modern science, a high-fat diet is a strong trigger for enhanced testosterone. But who they were, really, is us.

One recent theory is that the Clovisians may have been a northern hemisphere wild type, a group of hyper-aggressive Siberian Vikings. According to modern science, a high-fat diet is a strong trigger for enhanced testosterone. But who they were, really, is us.

One recent theory is that the Clovisians may have been a northern hemisphere wild type, a group of hyper-aggressive Siberian Vikings. According to modern science, a high-fat diet is a strong trigger for enhanced testosterone. But who they were, really, is us.

My 23andMe profile shows 3% of my genes are Native American, a common figure for those of us whose European ancestors arrived in America 300 or more years ago. Clovis heredity is within us.

My 23andMe profile shows 3% of my genes are Native American, a common figure for those of us whose European ancestors arrived in America 300 or more years ago. Clovis heredity is within us.

My 23andMe profile shows 3% of my genes are Native American, a common figure for those of us whose European ancestors arrived in America 300 or more years ago. Clovis heredity is within us.

The Clovis story resonates because we imagine them as ancient versions of ourselves, explorers of hidden continents, the last of the masterful hunters of enormous animals, the culmination of 40,000 generations of hunters. They must have had a sense of that timeless tradition. But to me, the biggest question is this. What did they think?