There must be a reason why Clovis spear points looked the same all across North America, up until the comet strike 12,800 ya. It is probably because they were a trade good, so that anything different would be less tradeable. After the comet strike and its continent-wide wildfires, evidently the trade network broke down, and local styles drifted, freed from conformity.
People often talk about a "Clovis culture", but it is unlikely that a single culture spanned the continent. What we know about is just the spear points.
Such an excellent context to put this in. Even just thinking more broadly about the unimaginably long stretches of relative stability / homogeneity in ancient and prehistoric cultures. The Old / Middle / New Kingdoms (c. 2,700-1,100 BCE), Aurignacian (c. 60,000-24,000 BCE) and Gravettian culture (c. 30,000-15,000 BCE) come to mind but the examples are basically endless.
The Mousterian (Neanderthal industry) is even more extreme example. Extant for 120 000 years, fairly similar from Portugal to Mongolia, in absence of any known long-distance trade network.
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There must be a reason why Clovis spear points looked the same all across North America, up until the comet strike 12,800 ya. It is probably because they were a trade good, so that anything different would be less tradeable. After the comet strike and its continent-wide wildfires, evidently the trade network broke down, and local styles drifted, freed from conformity.
People often talk about a "Clovis culture", but it is unlikely that a single culture spanned the continent. What we know about is just the spear points.
Such an excellent context to put this in. Even just thinking more broadly about the unimaginably long stretches of relative stability / homogeneity in ancient and prehistoric cultures. The Old / Middle / New Kingdoms (c. 2,700-1,100 BCE), Aurignacian (c. 60,000-24,000 BCE) and Gravettian culture (c. 30,000-15,000 BCE) come to mind but the examples are basically endless.
Reminds me of Mediterranean Omni-Spear https://acoup.blog/2023/11/10/collections-the-mediterranean-... but for this case looks like it's not because of trade, but maybe technology?
The Mousterian (Neanderthal industry) is even more extreme example. Extant for 120 000 years, fairly similar from Portugal to Mongolia, in absence of any known long-distance trade network.