Decode this article and answer the questions at the end:
Manis Mastodon (USA)
Pre-Clovis Megafauna Hunting Strategies
Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A&M University
The Manis Mastodon site is a preclovis site, located on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington
state in the Pacific northwestern United States. It was discovered in 1977 when a farmer
unearthed two mastodon tusks from a pond in a glacial kettle, a marshy depression in the
Sequim Prairie bog within a dense conifer forest.
Pollen studies at Sequim Prairie were conducted in the 1980s. These indicated that at the time
of the occupation, the region was undergoing an arid period, and the site would have been
within an opening dominated by shrubs and other plants that included cactus. The region was
colonized by coniferous forest between 11,000 and 9,000 years ago.
Manis Site Artifacts
Manis consists of most of the bones of a single male extinct elephant (mastodon), excavated
in 1977-1979. The mastodon lay on its left side within a depression, and the left (lower) half
of the mastodon was fairly intact. Its right (upper) side was missing two bones (the right
femur and right fibula), the rest of the bones were disarticulated (taken apart and scattered)
and the skull was fragmented. Cut marks, spiral fractures and flaking were noted, although
there is no evidence that the bones were weathered or gnawed by carnivores.
No stone tools were identified at the site, but the tip of a bone point is embedded in a rib. The
point was examined by high-resolution computed tomography (CT) and reported in 2011. The
point fragment is 3.5 centimeters (1.4 inches) in length, and 2.15 cm (.85 in) of its length is
embedded in the rib. Scholars calculated the minimum length of the bone point as 27-32 cm
(10.6-12.6 in) long, based on the amount of animal skin and muscle the point would have had
to penetrate to make it into the living rib. No bone growth is in evidence around the
embedded point, indicating that the mastodon died soon after it had been attacked. The bone
point itself was made from another mastodon's bones.
Dating Manis
Radiocarbon dates taken during the 1970s on the organic materials within the site averaged
~12,100 RCYBP, earlier than any Clovis occupations, which date between 11,000-10,800
RCYBP. At the time, Clovis was the earliest widely-accepted human culture believed to have
occupied North America, and, because of that, and because there were no stone tools found at
Manis, the site was not accepted by most scholars.
By the early decades of the 20th century, sufficient evidence of occupation within the
Americas predating Clovis had been discovered, leading to additional investigations of Manis,
among many other possible pre-Clovis occupations. A suite of Accelerated Mass Spectrometer
(AMS) radiocarbon dates were reported in 2011, on the purified bone collagen extracted from
the mastodon rib in which the bone point is embedded, and from two different mastodon tusk
fragments. These new dates range between 11,890+/-35 to 11,990+/-30 RCYBP, or 13,86013,763 cal BP, some 800-1,000 years older than Clovis.
NAME:________________________ PER:____
Manis and Pre-Clovis
The location of Manis in the Pacific northwest, the identification of bone points, and the new
suite of radiocarbon dates, strongly supports adding Manis to the growing number of accepted
Pre-Clovis occupations in North America. Unlike most other Pre-Clovis sites, Manis, suggest
that megafaunal (large mammal) hunting was part of the subsistence strategy of these littleknown diets of hunter-gatherers. Other sites which reflect such early megafaunal hunting
strategies include Ayer Pond in Washington state, and Hebior and Shaefer sites in Wisconsin.
DIRECTIONS:
Get into groups and each one of you read one paragraph and annotate it. Then
explain what you think you understood to the other students and if you think you
found the answer to one of these questions. Write your answers individually.
1. What do you think is meant by the words "preclovis site?" CITE THE TEXT
2. What is meant when they say "the area was undergoing an arid period." CITE THE TEXT
3. What is meant by "Manis" and where is it located? CITE THE TEXT
4.
What evidence did the archeologists identify as definitely of human origin ?
CITE THE TEXT
5. What do you think a "radiocarbon date" is?
6. How much earlier was the Manis site than the dates that Clovis culture is thought to exist?
CITE THE TEXT
7. How does this scholarly article about an archeological find show how human understanding
of the past keeps changing as new discoveries are made?