New Findings

In May 2008, some workers were digging a hole for a pond in Patrick Mahaffy’s garden in Colorado. The workers hit something. They found 83 ancient tools underground. They found out that Clovis people buried those tools. Clovis people lived during the ice age. They were hunter-gatherers.

When the workers found the tools Patrick Mahaffy thought that they were only 100 to 200 years old. Then he contacted scientists at the University of Colorado-Boulder to find out more about those objects. Scientists gave him more information about the tools.

The scientists were very surprised by this find. Why? The scientists wanted to learn more about the Clovis people but they could only find a few Clovis-age objects in North America. These people lived in North America thousands of years ago. The first Clovis artifacts were discovered in Clovis, New Mexico. For a long time, scientists thought the Clovis people were the first Americans.

Scientists found blood on the tools. They studied the blood they found. It showed that the Clovis people used the tools to butcher different animals. They butchered camels, horses, sheep, and bears. Until now, scientists thought that the Clovis people ate only woolly mammoths but they learnt that it wasn’t the fact.