The results of the scientific study appears in the journal article “Refining the Age of Clovis: Implications for the Peopling of the Americas”, by Michael R. Waters (Texas A&M University, College Station) and Thomas W. Stafford, Jr. (Stafford Research Laboratories, Lafayette, Colorado). It was published in the February 23, 2007 issue of Science.

In order to state this conclusion, the researchers evaluated materials from the known Clovis sites. According to information found at archaeological sites in South America, Waters and Stafford discovered that humans were already living in South America at the same time the Clovis people set foot in Alaska between 11,050 and 10,800 years ago, near the end of the last ice age.

The Clovis people reached Alaska through the land bridge across the Bering Sea that at one time linked Asia and Alaska. Within 200 years, they are believed to have spread throughout North America.

Clovis people (also called Llano people and Paleo-Indians) are a prehistoric Native American culture. They are called “Clovis” because of the distinctive flint spearhead they used for hunting, which was first found near Clovis, New Mexico, in the 1930s. Since then, they were presumed to be the first people to have walked in the Americas after numerous Clovis sites were discovered throughout the contiguous United States, Mexico, and Central America. However, this new information directly disputes that presumption.

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