Professor “Why”

A collection of Clovis point replicas and casts in the archaeology lab at Kent State University.
Credit: Kent State University

This story is about our societal hubris.

For some unknown reason, we humans need to feel that we are currently at the highest state of intelligence, productivity, creativity, etc. And, that those who came before were, at least, less than we. That they were not as advanced. That they knew less about our world and our universe. After all, we have cars, TVs, the Internet, rockets, weapons of mass destruction, and the Kardashians. They didn’t.
We have “progressed”.

There is a professor at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, who asks, “why”, and then goes about uncovering, “how”, too. His is a specialist in “experimental archaeology”.

“Dr. Metin Eren's experiments focus on making sense of ancient weapons littered across the Americas, illustrating how humans first settled the Western Hemisphere: through careful preparation, long-term planning, and refined technology.”

Refined technology? Yes.

Those olden people weren’t as dumb as we tend to think. And, we, obviously, are not as smart, either.

“Already he has cracked one longtime mystery. In the early 1900s, archaeologists found unusually shaped arrowheads in North America, with grooves carved from the base halfway to the head's tip. They first appeared over 13,000 years ago and spread rapidly across the continent, but existed nowhere else. Researchers were puzzled why the grooves were carved, with speculation running from religious rituals to mere decoration.”

“That's where experimental archaeology came in. By testing the pressure at which the arrowheads would crack using a $30,000 crusher and computer models, Eren discovered the grooves act as a shock absorber. It allows the arrowhead's thinned base to crumple slightly and absorb energy upon the arrow's impact, making the head less likely to break.”

“Archaeologists call it the ‘first truly American invention.’”

“In their most recent article published online in the Journal of Archaeological Science, Eren and his co-authors from Southern Methodist University (Brett A. Story, David J. Meltzer and Kaitlyn A. Thomas), University of Tulsa (Briggs Buchanan), Rogers State University (Brian N. Andrews), Texas A&M University and the University of Missouri (Michael J. O'Brien) explain the flint knapping technique of "fluting" the Clovis points, which could be considered the first truly American invention. This singular technological attribute, the flake removal or "flute," is absent from the stone-tool repertoire of Pleistocene Northeast Asia, where the Clovis ancestors came from.”

Please go here and here for the whole story.

Metin Eren, Archaeologist