Clovis people

The term ‘Paleoindians’ describes the earliest inhabitants of North America. The oldest identified Paleoindians, the Clovis people, were hunter and they flourished in North America approximately 11,500 years ago.

Clovis hunters seem to have used the local landscape to their advantage. Dogs appear to have been present at late Paleoindians localities in the western United States. It seems reasonable, then, that they accompanied Clovis bands, perhaps assisting in their hunts.

North America

The Clovis model argues that the diverse Native American cultures emerged from this initial group of humans who originated in a small, northern part of Siberia and crossed the Bering Land Bridge into the Americas.

After their arrival or establishment in the New York it took less than 1000 years for Clovis people to spread throughout North America and into portions of Mexico and South America.

Clovis people seem to have devoted much of their aesthetic attention to the manufacture of their fluted biface points, some of which are remarkably large and made from attractive stone.

In some cases, the stone was obtained from a considerable distance and may have been valued to its appearance. Clovis people also regularly produced osseous tools (made of bone, antler or ivory), including cylindrical roods beveled at one or both ends and functioning as projectile points or foreshafts.
Clovis people

Cro-Magnon: Animal hunting

The Cro-Magnon lived during period encompassing what archeologists refer to as Aurignacian and Magdalenian cultural eras which hit their peaks respectively about 20,000 and 12,000 years ago.

Evidence from skeleton remains, tools and weapons show that Cro-Magnon was a hunter and fisherman of skill. The animals were the game for which Cro-Magnon hunters looked: reindeer, bison, cattle, deer and horses.

Cro-Magnons were well equipped with all of the necessary weapons for a successful hunt, but in spite of all their powers and equipment they knew that they would face extremely dangerous animal s that could cost them their lives.

Scientists believed that not only did the Cro-Magnon hunter have an understanding of the behavior and the patterns of the animals they hunted, they also understood the qualities of the raw materials that certain animals would provide for tool and weapon making.

During this era, man appears to have had a grasp of the properties of the materials they used and experimented with various spear shapes and bases throughout the Late Ice Age.
Cro-Magnon: Animal hunting

Inuit hunting culture

The traditional Inuit of the Arctic region existed in a delicate balance with their environment. Traditionally they were hunters and fishermen living off of animal life. They hunted for whales, walruses, caribou, seals, polar bears and birds supplementing their diet with seaweed.

Inuit community is recognized around certain social principles and relations of kinship, cooperation and sharing. Hunting activities are organized cooperatively and based on the need of the community as a whole.

The Inuit divided the year into three hunting seasons, each revolving around a single animal: seal, the caribou and the whale.

Understanding the seasonal migratory patterns of animal is central to the Inuit’s subsistence strategy.

Inuit culture is a hunting culture and hunting marine mammals was likely one of the most importance factors in the development and, long-term success of Inuit communities. Marine mammals, such as whales, seals and walruses, provide reliable food security and the fat was a valuable fuel used for heating.

Inuit hunters waited patently sometimes for hours, for a seal to surface and be killed. Seal meat was first shared through reciprocal exchanges within kinship line and then among others in the community to ensure that no one went hungry.

In fall time caribou are hunted for meat for skins to be used as mattresses and for their sinew, which will be used for sewing the bearded sealskin covers on the umiat.

Despite the radical changes to Inuit life over the past century, reliance on Arctic animals remains strong. And in modern Arctic craftsman, women transform caribous antlers, and walrus and narwhal tusk, into carving and jewelry that are sold door to door or in southern Canadian or US stores specializing in ‘native art’.

Seal and caribou skins are also used by women to make wall-hangings depicting scenes of Inuit and these are also sold for income.
Inuit hunting culture

Early Humans Hunting and Gathering

Early Humans Hunting and Gathering
Scientists believe that humans evolved for millions of years before they learned to use fire about 500,000 to one million years ago.

The oldest fossils so far excavated mainly in Africa put the beginning of human like creatures – hominids - at between six and seven million years ago.

From the jaws and teeth of these hominids, scientist deduce that they were primarily plant eaters or herbivores.

Our back teeth the molars, are flat like stones for grinding grain and plants and that is what we still use them for when we chew.

Scientist think that over millions of years, early humans developed two survival advantages:

• Between 4 million and 2 million BC human brain size tripled, growing to what it is today, approximately 1,400 cubic centimeters
• They stood upright in two feet - became bipedal - which allowed them to see farther and left their hands free to use weapons for protection and to kill animals for food.

Food historians speculate that early humans learned to like the taste of meat from small animals that could be caught and killed easily, like lizards and tortoise and from scavenging the leftover carcasses of large animals killed by other large animals.

These early humans were hunter-gatherers , nomads who followed the food wherever it wandered or grew.

Between 40,000 BC an 12,000 BC, Asian peoples went east and crossed into North and South America.

The Ice Age had dried up the seas, creating dry land between Asia and Alaska, making it possible to walk from one continent to the other. So the first people in the Americans were Asians.

Work related to food was divided by gender. Men left the home to hunt animals by following them to where they went for food, especially salt.

Women gathered fruits, nuts, berries and grasses because their lives revolved around a cycle of pregnancy, birth and child rearing.

Gathering was more reliable than hunting. Becoming carnivores – meat eaters – probably helped humans survive, too. In case of a shortage of plants , there was an alternate food source.

Scientists believe than invented tools about 1.9 million to 1.6 million years ago. Early humans butchered animal meat, even elephants, with blades made out of of stone, which is why it is called the Stone Age.

Archeologists call this people Homo habilis – “handy man.”

Then, approximately 1,5 million to 500,000 years ago, another group appeared called Homo erectus – “upright man.”

These people migrated north to Europe and east to India, China and Southeast Asia. They had better tools than any of the other groups. And for the first time, they had fire.
Early Humans Hunting and Gathering