Folsom tradition
The Folsom culture, named after the first locality, Folsom, New Mexico, is an early prehistoric culture of Paleo-Indian period in North America. Their range extended from what is now northern Mexico through the southwestern United States, the Great Plains, and east of the Mississippi River in present-day Missouri and Illinois to the Great Lakes. The greatest density of finds is available from the High Prairie, Highland prairies east of the Rocky Mountains. The Folsom culture is dated using 14C dates on 10800-10150 Before Present (~ 8800-8200 BC) and followed the previous Clovis culture. After the end of the Folsom culture followed regionally fragmented cultural developments up to 8000 BC dated the beginning of the Archaic period.
The characteristic artifacts of the Folsom culture, the flat projectile points made of flint and other cherts, who were beaten on both sides of both blades and long, have as broad surface retouching. In addition, the people took advantage of discounts as blades, various scrapers, needles and awls. Typical sites are hunting places (English: Kill sites) and mining sites of high-quality stone materials.
Way of life
After the extinction of yet glacially influenced megafauna in North America, which falls in the time of the Clovis culture, were bison the most important big game from which the hunting and gathering in small groups and family associations across North America grazing people lived, and its fur, leather, tendons, bones and hair provided them with material for clothing and tools. In addition, the hunt was on smaller game such as whitetail deer, pronghorn, bighorn sheep and small animals like rabbits, but also reptiles and birds, as well as the gathering of fruits and seeds of wild plants. People covered a considerable distance - many stone tools were found 200-400 km away from the quarries from which the material came.
From the Folsom culture some of the oldest finds of ritual and art in North America come from. People used red ocher from ground hematite, to sprinkle the bottom of a suspected round hut. For the same material, there is a zigzag line, which was found painted on a bison skull.
Discovery
The study of the settlement of the Americas began with the discovery of the Folsom culture. 1908 discovered a black cowboy named George McJunkin at today's Folsom, New Mexico bison bone in which to invest, stone projectile points. The site was only in 1925 reported to the Colorado Museum of Natural History, 1926/27, he was the director of the museum, JD Figgins, and to rate solid external paleontologists, including Barnum Brown and Alfred Kidder examined. They found that the bones belonged to a Bisonart which had already disappeared years ago over ten thousand along with the glaciers. Hence the today 's leading doctrine of the colonization of North America developed at the end of the last ice age over the then existing Beringia land bridge between Siberia and Alaska. It was clarified by later discoveries and dated using the 14C method.
Other major sites of the Folsom culture Linde Meier site in northern Colorado ( excavation from 1935, published only in the 1970s ), and Hanson, Wyoming (published in 1980 ), which were not only hunting places, but also residential places.