Dummies Guide to Stone Projectile Points w/ Dr. Adam Gray

Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your host into the world of hunting the icon of North American wilderness. There, we'll talk about tactics, gear, conservation, but will also bring you into some of the wildest country on the planet. Chasing better something that's been in the ground for thousands of years? How did it get there? Was it dropped? Was it shot at something? And and and it's buried and you come along and pick it up, and all

you can do is wonder how these people live? Everyone I've picked up and you're I guess this is what a lot of people think. But you learned how was it lost? Was it shot at a deer? Was it shot at a bear? Was it just discarded because it was not usable anymore. Was it lost? Did someone give it to his son and his irresponsible son lost it? But that boy, right, there's lost a lot of stuff

of mine. If you are a hunter, there's probably deep inside of you somewhere some real curiosity and a desire to know more about Native Americans, how they use this land, and how they hunted. On this podcast, we're gonna jump start you by fifteen years in your knowledge of Native of American stone projectile points number one, number two, who came here first in North America, where they came from?

And all the different ideas of where these people came from, and and understanding of the different time periods in which humans have been here in North America. And the reason I say fifteen year jump start is because fifteen years I've been highly interested in Native American stone projectile points as we began to find points on our property in different places, and I've just gathered information from different sources

different places. I never really could find like a dummies guide to stone projectile points in Native American history of North America, and so I wanted to sit down with

an expert. And that's just what we're gonna do on this podcast when we sit down with Dr Adam Gray and he talks about but we just have a fascinating conversation for about an hour and fifteen minutes that really, if you listen to this, you will have a ton of valuable information that's going to that's gonna project you into more study or if you just learn some of this stuff, you're just gonna be fascinated. So incredible conversation,

you're gonna enjoy this podcast. I want to draw your attention as well as we come into the fall season here and we're baiting bears and different parts of the country. To our friends at Northwoods Bear Products. They have a full line of bear scent attractants and north Woods is known far and wide for their gold Rush, which is a friar grease addittive, which is one of my favorite products that they have for drawing in bears. But they've also got just spray bottles full of scent all types

of different flavors that've got some dry powder scents. But check out our friends at north Woods the air products this fall and we're pounding away right now on the September October issue of Bear Hunting Magazine. This issue will be in the hands of our subscribers before September one, and it's a very good issue, a lot of good how to stuff, a lot of a lot of great content. We've got an article about Eddvance, who was on the last podcast. We've got some scouting tips for fall bear hunting.

We've got five creative ways to kill a bear in twenty nineteen the fall. We've got this story about my five and fifty pound Oklahoma black bear from last year. So if you're not a subscriber to Bear Hunting Magazine, check it out at bear dash Hunting dot com, Bear hyphen Hunting dot com. We are in Melbourne, Arkansas. This is my first time to Melbourne, Arkansas. Well, welcome. We're in Melbourne, Arkansas, and uh I am in the home of Dr Adam Gray. You're you're a medical doctor, Adam.

That's correct. I've just been calling you Adam. That's that's all right. Please call me Adam. So where you you work out of Melbourne? Is there a hospital in Melbourne?

There's not a hospital here, but I have a family practice clinic here where at least space from Baxter Reason Medical Center in Mountain Home and I have a family practice clinic there with two nurse practitioners and also working in an emergency room in Salem, Arkansas, and I also attend to patients in five nursing comes around little jack of jack of trades, you know, yeah, master of none. Why I'm here is uh is you are? You? Were? You were referred to me by a guy that I

kind of follow. That's beg into digging era heads for the layman's terms, but stone projectile points Native American artifacts. That's what you've devoted as I understand the last fifteen years, you've you've become a collector. You're a you you find our heads. You you know the you're you're a regional expert. I would say, thank you. Um, I try to be you know a lot more than me. Let me put it out well, it's something that I've devoted a lot

of time too. And physicians are weird people. They don't get into anything just a little bit there. There all are none you know. Um. But but since I found my very first area head with my son's mother about fifteen years ago, it's become a hobby and a lot of people would say an addiction. You know, there there are people that that do this a lot, and and it it takes up the large percentage of their time, but it's it's a lot of fun. And it's great

fun for me and for my family. And I read a lot of archaeology journals and learn about what we're finding, and you can go back and learn about how these people were living, you know, back in thousands and thousands of years ago. Well, I'll start by telling you a little bit of why I'm so interested in this and and and I've already shared it with you a little bit. But several years ago, we got mules. Were own seven

acres Washington County, Arkansas. There's a creek that borders the front side of our property and a small tributary creek that borders the western side. We started getting these mules, and the mules made trails. They had spots where they were rubbing, you know that where they were dusting, where they ate the grass down, and where runoff started to create, you know, bare spots out in this field, which is bad for pasture health and soil health. But we started

bumping into these stone points in our front yard. And and I'll tell you what I tell the kids every time we pick one up is and it's so unique when it happens on your own place, and we're gonna we're gonna get into a lot more than just that. But you know, when I picked up that air head, that first one, I told the kids, I said, the last human that touched this before me was planning to cook his meal over an open fire with a critter

that he killed with this stone. Yes, And I have said that exact thing to my kids on numerous occasions. Something that's been in the ground for thousands of years, How did he get there? Was it dropped? Was it shot at something? And and and it's buried and you come along and pick it up, and all you can do is wonder how these people live? Everyone I've picked up and you're probably I guess this is what a lot of people think. But you learned. How was it lost? Was it shot at a deer? Was it shot at

a bear? Was it just discarded because it was not usable anymore? Was it lost? Did someone give it to his son and his irresponsible son lost it? That never happened that boy, right, there's lost a lot of stuff of mine. Uh now, yeah, that's the mystery of it. I think that's the intrigue of finding this ancient stuff with people that were really just like us. I mean,

they were they were humans. They they they had they had dream teams, and they cared about their families, and they wanted their sons and daughters to prosper, and they they they had needs that had to be met. I mean, they were humans, but they lived in this lifestyle that is so different than us. Right. They were camping three sixty five, I mean, you know, and following the food and food and water and shelter. Those are the three

things they had to have. Yeah, And and so they developed over time these technologies that that would allow them to procure what they needed in order to to reproduce, to survive, and eventually to thrive and become you know, the Mississippian period Native Americans that we all think of when we hear the word Indian, right right, right, Well, okay, this conversation is going to be difficult because you know so much and have so many questions, and we're sitting

here in your your office, your library, and you have this amazing collection of stone points from all over well and most of them would be from the South, if I guess, But some of them would be from other places. Sure, I collect points from from mainly from what we call the Central States, which would be from Nebraska to West Virginia and Michigan down to Louisiana that area. Yeah, all all the points in this area are somewhat related to each other through time and in different space. We call

it spatially. You know, they overlapped areas and UH as these point types evolved over thirteen thousand, five hundred years, you can see uh similarities between different types of points and you can see the evolution process and that gives you clues into what the climate was like, and what they were hunting and UH and and what they were using these points for because not all of these points

were shot at things. Some of them would have been knives, some of them may have been a true spirit point, some may have been a true arrow point, some may have been a tip to in that Lattle Dart. So, well, there's several things I want to talk about. The first thing, and and we're approached, and this from the standpoint of like we're talking to people that don't know anything about well about these people. And so my my first question or what I want to talk about first is where

did these people come from? Boy, that's that's the sixty four dollar question right there, and and and there is there has been a theory that's been around for a long time, and it's called the Clovis first theory. And that's, uh, that's the null void point right now that we're trying

to figure out is that the case or not. But that theory says, basically that it's believed that the first Americans came across a Siberian land bridge over into Alaska, through an ice free corridor through Alaska and Canada and populated North America and then spread out into Central and South America from there. Um. That theory that's been widely accepted for a long time, a long time, a long time.

But there are some problems with that theory. And and one of those theories is that one of the problems with that theory is that that when they radiocarbon date um, you can't radiocarbon data point, but you can radiocarbon date something that's sitting next to it, like a like a burnt acorn shell or hickory shell, because something that's got carbon in it. When they get these associated dates for

Clovis points. They date older in the southeastern United States and they do anywhere near Alaska or the northwestern United States, and so that doesn't make sense. It doesn't want to even stop you right there. So the Baring land Bridge would have been an ice free zone because of glaciers and a much colder climate, so the oceans were lower. They were because much of the Earth's water was capped

into these glaciers. And so basically from Alaska to the camp Chatka Peninsula of Russia would have been this thousand mile wide land bridge. I recently heard a podcast from a guy, uh Steve Ronnella, so some of the something is just fresh on my mind. But they talked about how and certainly people did cross that land bridge. They did,

so it's not we're not debating whether they crossed. What you're going to talk about in a minute is the theory of where they the first, because that's been the that's been the main thing is were they the first people? And so the that theory would have been that people crossed over from Asia and they came in and from Alaska basically populated North and South America. The Clovis site

is in New Mexico. And so what you're saying is is that the oldest site that we know of from radio carbon dating, finding these points, finding this mammoth skeleton skeleton would have been older than anything north of it. So if they would have been the first, there should have been older sites. They're correct, and that's not what they're finding, and so that doesn't support that theory. And so there are some other theories that are being put forth right now, and and some some have a lot

of support and some have a few. One of those theories is that, Okay, let's let's go back and talk about the Clovis Point for just a minute. Clovis points are what we call fluted. The base of the point has been thinned with something called direct percussion, where they hit the rock directly and knocked flakes off of it and thinned it. Um That technology does not exist anywhere

else on planet Earth. It is, and it is it is only in North America, and it's widely regarded as being the first invention in the New World because it's not found anywhere else. But it's unlikely that someone stepped across the burying land bridge and knocked out of Clovis Point and went from there. They were using some kind

of tools before that technology was developed. So a lot of people now believe that the Clovis technology started somewhere in the southeastern United States and the technology spread much more rapidly than the people spread. But it spread probably northward and westward into a population that already existed. And and so if if you believe that, then you still have to ask the question what kind of tools were

they using before that? Where did they come from? Okay, so if that, if what you just said is what happened, then does that tell me Explain to me how that could nullify that the that they weren't the first people. The first people didn't come from the land bridge, right. First of all, we we do have a lot of information that we know that that Native American populations in the United States and in Central America share certain genetic

haplotypes with people from Siberia. So we do know that the d n A came from Siberia, at least some of it. You know, there's no way to prove all of it didn't, But so we do know they came that from there. But but the the every all of them did, that's a good question. We really don't know.

There's some some theories that say that there may be some European d n A in groups um up in the northeastern United States that share a lot of their language patterns with Norwegian languages and the and and that there were blue eyed Native Americans up in that part of the country also, and so some people that would have crossed over maybe a similar type of passage, you know, maybe from Norway through green Land and Iceland that area, maybe skimming along the the oh when when there was

when the oceans were lower and there would be could be right, So that's that's another theory. And and there's also a theory that the cloths technology came from a previous technology that that that existed in France called a salutary in technology. There are a lot of similarities between the two technologies. Uh Solutrians didn't flute their points, but but other than that, the technologies and the toolkits that

they used were very similar. Um. So there's could it could it not be possible that two people would come up with the same thing though independently there's that highly unlike it's highly unlikely because if it were to happen, it wouldn't happen in the same continent. It would have happened around the world, like so many other different technologies have evolved. Okay, I see what's so you're saying, because it happened one place here and something very similar happened

one place here, that they're connected. If it had happened ten places, maybe this is like it would make more sense. This is just the way that kind of if you have a rock and you want to kill something and start knocking around on it, you get that point, right right, convergent evolution. I think that I think the biologists would

call that so rather than divergent evolution. But there are many many technologies around the world that have evolved separate from one another but ended up being the same thing, you know. But but I don't think the flutid point technology is one of those at all. So we're looking at we're looking at a fluted point type that that was invented in North America and found nowhere else in the world. First American invention, right, very first. Yeah, Yeah,

that's that's an interesting way to look at that. Uh. There are also some theories that that maybe um, some Polynesians or other groups populated the western hemisphere from South America, the very southern part of South America, where there are some very old uh sites down there that dated date

much older than anything in North America. Uh. There's another point type in South and Central America called the hel Hobo Point, and there are some people who are theorizing now that that point type traveled north from there and then became a fluted point called a Cumberland point, and that Cumberland points evolved into Clovis points. Now that's a sticky that's a sticky subject with a lot of people, because everybody's got their opinion on this. But the problem

with it is Cumberland points haven't been well dated anywhere yet. Well, so are you saying that the oldest sites that we know between North and South America are in South America? Okay? So for that with that, when did that knowledge come forth? It's been in the last fifteen or twenty years relatively, right, I mean, I guess for And I've talked to several vocational archaeologists about that, and and some of them just blow it off and say, no, there's problems with the data.

The dates aren't good, things like this. But there's a whole another camp. And that's how science works. You have to put forth something and then you discuss it and they come to a consensus about it. Twenty years later they decide if it was writer right. So but but inside, I mean it is plausible. I guess that inside of the burying land bridge theory, what would you what would you call that? Just some clothes first, and the first

kind of encompasses that. So with the clothes first theology, it's it would just be happenstance that just the oldest site we found was in South America. Like so there's older ones, we just hadn't found them. This just happens

to be the one we found way down there. And and there are some there are some sites in North America that that have been radiocarbon dated human occupation older than any any known low the states that we have in North America, um, the Topper site, the met Across Rock Shelter site, with some sites that we know there were people living there, we just haven't found any tools yet or anything that's diagnostic that can tell us these people were these people. So then they've got some very

crude stone tools. I think that's eventually gonna happen. I think those sites are extremely rare and we just haven't

found the right one yet. You know, when you think about the amount of land space in the in the amount of that space that has actually been excavated by people that knew what they were doing, right, I mean, I'm just novice, just thinking, but I mean, it's like there could be something two ft under the foundation of your house that could unlock the whole story and that will never know You never know it's there, I mean, And so I guess you, I mean, you just have

to work with what you do know, right, And and I'm I would call myself in a vocational archaeologist and amateur archaeologists. And you know, I don't do this for a living. I do it for fun. I don't excavate in a controlled fashion like archaeologists do. But they're archaeologists are limited in what they can do. They first of all, they're relying on public moneys most of the time, which is limited and it's just not a priority in our

culture unfortunately. But they're also limited by time. They have to stand back and and brush dirt off of things and find them and record them. And we're we're you know, people who like to go out and find their heads. You know, they do it at there when they want to, when the weather is good, and they do a lot of it. And so most of the knowledge that we have about point types actually come from people who don't

do this for a living. Yeah, that's interesting. So the best thing that can happen is is for archaeologists and and people who hunt these points to come together and and find a way to work together to identify a site. And I'll give you a good example. Dr Julie morrow Over at a s u IS is a friend of my and she has spent a significant portion of her career and looking for a Clovis site in Arkansas that is stratified and can be dated and studied, and it

just hasn't happened yet. Um, and she's not gonna be by Clovis side. That means the technology of that fluted point bottom right and and and she's not likely to find that unless somebody comes forward somewhere and says, hey, we're finding this stuff here, you need to come excavate this. And so you know, we've got to figure out a way to work together. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. So okay,

so we've established that. Now, would you say the clothes first is still the predominant theory, but there's just some other things that kind of don't make sense, don't totally make sense, right and and so right now we're still going with that theory. Closed first. That's the oldest point type that we know of. So that was five years, yes, roughly, yes, so, but that's in New Mexico. Right, So the first the first people that came over the burying land bridge would

have been how long ago? Oh, that's a good question. Um. You know, there are some sites in North America now that that data up to fourteen fifteen thousand years, and they probably and that's the buzzword number that I have heard, thousand years there have been there's been human occupation North America. And you know, they probably didn't didn't get a group of ten thousand people in march them across the Berian Lanberge.

They probably came in waves, you know, ten or twenty or thirty here, and you know, and so there was kind of constant infusion of these people coming across here seasonally, you know, when the weather permitted. They were probably following food, which is what most you know, that's what they were doing. They were following whatever whenever they could eat and uh, and so eventually they just found their way over here

and then got a little further south. And now you said something earlier about the genetics, So talk to me a little bit about that. Like, so they've taken because there's still intact tribes of Native Americans that are today, and so they're able to do genetic testing on these people compare those that you and I know nothing of this other than just the idea of but with people

over and from where, from Siberia primarily. Uh, they've done some testing on DNA haplotypes from Siberia and Japan and even Polynesian countries and compared that uh to d N A that that has been voluntarily given by Native Americans. Now, an interesting caveat to that is is that a lot of the North American Native Americans, UH that we're familiar with those tribes, they refuse to give any blood for sampling, um and and they have their reasons for that, and

you have to just respect that. So most of the haplotyping that's been done has been done on Central American Native Americans. Yeah, so they're having to compare to those. But but it's assumed that they're related, you know, and most likely they are, you know. So that's that's just an interesting little caveat So it's like, so about a doubt these people can be connected back October there no doubt, no doubt at all, no doubt at all. And then and and uh dr Morrow has been involved with with

a little bit of that. I believe it's the Anasic side out in the northwestern United States where where an infant was found buried with Clovis tools, Clovis by faces, large what they call platter by faces and Clovis points and DNA was recovered from that skeleton and compared. And so that skeleton has been shown to be related to

uh Native Americans in the western Hemistinal. Okay, if if it, if the Clovis first idea wasn't true, wouldn't there be people in South America that were connected to some other part of the world, right right? And and I'm not getting any of that um in in the literature that I'm reading. I get very little coming out of South America. You probably would have just something to talk to somebody who knew a little bit more about that but yes, um so and and it's and and that study, by

the way, is in its infancy right now. They're they're still identifying ways to mark genetics through time. Mitochondrial DNA and certain haplotypes um seem to persist through lineages and some don't. So they're still finding these markers and it's and it's and it's blossoming right now. They're gonna start testing people, uh and and find out that there there may be some European DNA, there may be some Polynesian DNA. We won't know, you know, until you get a large

number a large sample together. And when they do that, you're gonna find some interesting things. I think, yeah, yeah, okay, So we've established that people for sure came across there, there's some we don't know exactly where everybody came from, right, But then what did they do and how did they Because would pretty much every part of North America have had some Native American habitation, I mean, I know, in in other than places that would have been covered by glaciers.

These people were obviously explorers and they were not afraid of what it was around the next corner. I don't know if you've been on a good fishing stream, and you can't wait to see what's around the next corner. But that's the way they were, and they were they couldn't wait to see what was what was around the next corner, what what could I eat over there? And they eventually just spread out across North America, filled every corner of it, and then and then they started populating.

The period that where the Clovis people were here is called the Paleolithic period um and and really Native American history in the United States can be kind of divided into about five different time periods. The Paleo would be Clovis points Folsom points a lot about in their thousand five years section period of time. There's five sections sections of yahi section of development, and they are used to

describe how they were living. So this Paleo period, there were bands of people, probably small bands of people that were chasing mega fon big animals that don't exist today. And they were they were hunters, that's what they were doing. They lived on meat. They may have you know, collected some things along the way, you know, but they were

not planting anything. They were not foraging. They were hunting and uh and they were hunting things like bison antiquois, which are old bison that were much bigger than the bison that we think of today. UM mastodon, mammoth, giant sloth, giant beaver, um, short faced bear. I don't know if you've heard of that one or not. Big big stuff, and these people were probably pretty tough. You didn't want

to come across them. So the Paleold Period, well, just for people listen, this is a This is something that I have as just a novice at this It is something that's marked in my mind. That's helped me is I've tried to understand stuff back this big geologic time and stuff is the the Pleistocene period ended ten thousand years ago. That's about right in the place to scene.

So so ten thousand years ago is when all those big guys died off, When the mammoths died, that's when the short faced bears died, that's when the separatetooth cats died, that's when the American lion died. Like, but there were humans living during that time here. They were here and for a long time in American archaeology, they didn't know that.

They didn't believe that. Um, but then you know, Clovis and fulsome sights changed that they found man made points mixed in with skeletons from mastodon in Missouri and mammoth in New Mexico, and and that was that was big. That was huge to to know that mankind men were here with these animals at the same time. You know,

that was a big deal. And that was back in the thirties, you know, So we've known that since then, and it's just that when the Clovis site was found, but that got in Mexico right a long time ago. But then there was something else in Missouri. Yes, I'm not that there's another side up in Missouri and there's a state park just uh this side of St. Louis, and I believe it's called the Chemswick Side, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. Yeah, it's a pretty neat place. So

I didn't mean to interrupt you. And I'm trying to just piece all this together. So this is just like I'm having a private conversation with you, trying to answer my questions. But okay, So there's thirteen thousand, five hundred years of occupation, five different time periods. The first one was Paleo and during that paleo time period is when humans were hunting mastodons and fighting short face bears, right, Okay,

so start me back from there, all right. So from there, um as the as the environment changed, the glaciers were retreating, the climate was warming up in these megaphon and were disappearing, the archael just caught the economy. The economy change what they were doing, uh, and so they had to figure out different ways to to survive. And so that's really when the white tail deer became a big, big food source, uh, for for natives in this And we're there white tailed

deer back before the most certainly. And there were elk in Arkansas there were, yes, they were, yes, they they just were one that survived that whatever happened. And so there's a big thing of something happened very rapidly, very quickly killed off all these critters in in the in

the vegetation changed, the landscape changed. And I'd be honest with you if I had if I had ten guys with me and we were going to decide whether or not we were gonna go try to kill a mastodon or if we're gonna hunt down a whitetail deer, you know, go for the mastodon. And you know, if if you can coordinate a hunt and bring one down, you can feed your whole clan for a long time. Deer or

not easy to kill. And so when they started having to rely on killing elk and deer and smaller animals, they had to come up with a different way to do that. And and so the point type technology really changed about ten thousand, five hundred years ago to about about eight thousand and years ago. Um. And and they weren't making these fluted points anymore. They were making different types of points that were placed on the end of a stick that was slung at an animal with a

tool called on that laddle. Um. That's when that technology started somewhere around that. Well, that was what I was gonna ask it. So all the cloths points were spears, yes, they were probably on right, Yeah. And and they were having to surround those creatures and bring them down, you know, trap them in a watering hole something like that. But but all those disappeared and so they had to start, you know, hunting other things to survive. And they also

started probably picking some berries. You know, in two or three thousand years of experience, there was probably somebody in that tribe of people that knew that the red berries were good and the blueberries were bad. And so then now they've got some kind of an idea of what's safe to eat and what's not. So they started foraging more and and and eating meat when they had it.

They probably were eating a lot of muscles out of the you know, freshwater muscles, and and you a lot more things, eating rabbits and small mammals things like that. So everything changed, and in this particular region of the country, uh, one of the one of the most spectacular and fantastic point types in North American history evolved, and it's called the Dalton point uh and and around here Dalton points are highly regarded for their workmanship and for their quality,

their size. Uh and in there they're a view very beautiful point type. And and that type persisted for maybe a thousand years. And that point type then evolved into probably several dozen other point types after that. So it's kind of the granddad that was that the first is that the next progression from Clovis Clovis Andalton right so close describe a Dalton a Dalton point, uh boy, some can be over a foot long. Most of them are

two or three inches long. They're generally the outline, as they call it, auriculate, but it's it's shaped a lot like a Clovis point. Uh. And some of them have some fluting, but the fluting on them was created by different means. It wasn't They weren't hit directly with another rock. They were hit indirectly with something placed in between the point in the in the striking device. And a lot

of Clovis points are excusing. Dalton points are not fluted at all, um, but they're they're very similar in outline, but you can look at them and see the way they're flake. The flaking patterns different, the fluting type is different. So this it's we're not just talking about and this isthing I learned earlier is we're not just talking about shapes. You're talking you're you guys are seeing technology. The way

that they're flaking these points, you bet you can. You can look at the flaking pattern on a narrowhead and you can tell generally what time period is made from most of the time. Yeah, And and the way they made their era has changed through time. You know, the Clovis, the Clovis culture was Paleo and then the Dalton culture transitioned that Paleolithic lifestyle into a more uh a little bit more settled down lifestyle. And so they called this

Dalton period the transitional Paleo period. And so they're very old, very old points, but they transitioned, um, these these hunters into a hunter gatherers and you know type of situation. And and that's the archaic and that's what came after the Dalton points. Um. And and these people were relying on anything they could get their hands on. They didn't travel nearly as far uh, and they were more people

here too. They were starting right, and they were and they were starting to form I wouldn't call them tribes but clans maybe or groups of people that were inter related. Um. They probably met certain times of the year at big rivers and got together and shared technology, they shared stories. They probably uh married off daughters and sons to other tribes to you know, to to you know, prevent any inbreeding.

And they did a lot of things. But they were but they were Archaic period that would be the third after the Dalton that's a period Paleo Dalton arcad you got it. And and the archaic can be further so divided into early, middle, and late. But for what we're talking about, just slumping it together it makes its gonna work. Um,

And that's taken us to like eight thousand years ago. Yeah, the early Arcaic probably started around maybe nine hundred years ago something like that and lasted till about five thousand, four thousand, a period, very long time period. And it's a it's a time period because of the progression of technology stayed the same. It's the time periods differentiated by a progression of technology. That and economy. That's the way everything for that five thousand year period was fairly stable.

Fairly stable, yeah, in terms of what kind of animals were here, when, what kind of technology they had, how they were making a living actually, and I think and as those populations grew and they learned how to do things, life got a little easier for them. Uh. And so what happened after that is is that people started interconnecting with each other a lot more. Now, let's go back to the Dalton culture for just a few minutes. They're the first, Um, they're the first people in North America

that that used woodworking tools. Uh as far as we know. Uh, they made an ads, a woodworking tool that's fairly diagnostic of their culture. And they were they were making dugout canoes and so they were the first people that were probably using waterways, um that we know of. And and they were also the first culture in North America to to bury their dead in a location over time. Now, all of these people most likely buried their dead, but

these people buried them in the same locations repeatedly. And so the oldest known cemetery in North America is over in Green County, Arkansas, and it's called the Sloane Side uh and it was excavated in the nineteen eighties um by by Dan Morris and some other archaeologists from this area, and it was it was interpreted as that would be interpreted from an anthropological position as a pretty a fairly

developed society. I mean, it's starting. It's coming from these people that were just like just just kind of spread out, uncivilized. And then this is showing, hey, these people are starting to they're getting some structure to their society that would have been in the Dalton period. By this time, there wasn't tribes, no, they were just people. We really when we think of the word tribe. We tend to think of Quapo cattle, you know, these names that we have.

But these people, these people weren't. They didn't have names. See that's news to me, right there, Adam. I mean, I've never even thought of it that deep. Like I mean, I hear about these Native American names and tribes and would have thought that all these points could be brought back to a certain This is making a lot of sense to me. So that they were they were just people. They were just people. And then as this over ten thousand years, when society got really organized, that's when they

started having these more modern tribes. And they probably didn't they probably didn't have a need for a name for us because they weren't coming across other people that often, so they didn't have to have didn't have to have reason to say I would be forged only when you had other people that you need to differentiate yourself from, right, and so you know, and and and also you have to remember they didn't have a written language, and so this stuff was not written down, has passed down through

oral histories and and and I know Native Americans and they talked about the ancient ones, just like the Egyptians called to refer to their ancient ones. They're probably referring to people that were here a long time before they were, but didn't have a name, you know, just the ancient ones. Um. So going back to these adults as they were, they were very big group of people, and they they did things that hadn't been done before they started to settle

down more. Uh. They made very high quality artifacts, mainly project all points. UM. They weren't into making any kind of artistic expression types of no, certainly no pottery, uh, no effigies of animals or anything like that. Um. But but they were they were a predecessor of many different types of points that evolved over the Archaic period. Uh. In the Archaic period in Arkansas is is a very

interesting time period. UM. In northern Arkansas, there are a lot of caves and and there were a lot of groups of people that utilize those caves on a regular basis. You know, big overhangs. We've got these big limestone bluffs with big, beautiful great shelters. Well, most most people who hunt have been through some of these at some point or another and seen the smoke stains on the top of the cave. And that's old but they were utilizing these for shelter and stay warm, stay dry, and they

were still probably in small bands at that point. But that's what the Archaic and Arkansas is all about. It was was people moving up and down these rivers and streams, trying to stay close to freshwater, trying to stay warm, trying to stay dry, trying to find some food and just eke out in a living You know, it was tough. You just can't we just we just can't imagine it.

I don't want to pull you off of your because we're going down through the time periods and I it would be good to get kind of an overview of the different time periods. So maybe this question is gonna throw us off course, But when did they get to Arkansas? When they when did they get to Arkansas? We we have found Clovis points in Arkansas. They were here thirteen thousand, five hundred years ago. Um. And and a matter of fact, you know at my house here in Iszer County near Melbourne.

UM my house sits on top of the site that we find arrowheads in a lot. And my son Liam has found a Clovis point in our yard in our field. It's thirteen thousand, five hundred years old. So they were here. You know, they were here within you know that at least that technology was here. There may have been here people here before that, but we know that Clovis was here in Arkansas. There here are there Clovis on the East coast, you bet really bet Florida all the way

up into New York and and even southern Canada. All the I would have I would have thought there would have been like a like a I mean, if they came from the barings trade, it seems like, I don't know. I guess that technology just scattered and there's no way to really tell what came before that. Are they were following food? You have to remember they were following food.

Some of these later Archaic and Dalton cultures they may have been traveling, traveling up and down river systems and staying within a kind of a defined area that they called their own. But the but the Clovis people and these Paleolithic people, they were following food. If the if the mastodon went over there, they went over there. I mean, it was they just followed the food. How long it would take a gone foot to travel from Alaska to

the East host of the United States. It's interesting because that study has been done and it takes a long time and then and that's one of the reasons that this doesn't make sense is because the dating period for Clovis points is just within a few hundred years, but they estimated with taken man a lot longer than that. Just hunting and following game to spread out through North America doesn't make sense. I wonder how fast a guy could do it if you just walk. I mean, like

two years, take me a lot longer than that. I mean, they would have had no reason to just walking a debt. I mean, they wouldn't have done that. But if you think about it from that perspective though, like I mean, maybe they could have in five years walked from there east coast. So I guess when you think about it like that, it's not as big a stretch as you might think. Yeah, but you gotta remember too, there were

no roads. There was nothing. There's nobody even to tell you which way to go, you know, So it was more meandering than it was walking the straight line anywhere, but up and down mountains. Can you imagine they didn't know where the mountain passes were. They didn't know, you know, and they had to fallow water. And so anytime you had to fallow water, you're you're not walking a straight line. You're following a river, which is rarely a straight line.

And they didn't have any reason to move other than food or maybe they've been pushed out by something another group. So it's like it's not like they were trying to go somewhere. They were just trying to get to the next place that they could make a living. Right Imagine imagine walking out into the bare woods with all your stuff and knowing you're never coming back home again, and whatever you had with you, that's what you had to survive with, you know, and then you had to make it.

When you ran out of it, you had to make more of it or you didn't get anymore. You know, are heads or points or arrows or whatever. It's it's it's beyond our comprehension. We have it so until today, it's it's tough to think about. You know, I've been out hunting before and after a few hours my feet get cold and I'm done. You know, they couldn't be done. What do they think the lifespan of the like paleo people would have been thirty years. Yeah, that's a that's

a probably a pretty good estimate. You know, they probably died of t or you know, some type of disease. That's right. These people probably looked a lot older than they were. Yeah, yeah, I think about that. A thirty year old man being an old man culture probably a wise man. He's seen a lot, probably after thirty years. Yeah, So what comes after arcic archaic? Well, the archaic the arcaic is replaced by a time period called the Woodland

time period. And in the Woodland time period again can be divided into two or three more um time periods, but we'll stick with just Woodland. They were much more settled. Um. They started developing pottery. Uh, they learned to use clay. They used to had a little more free time than they did. They did, they started making some art. Well, they had figured out where the good spots were. It's like it's like you don't tell somebody where your good

airhead spot is. They had found where the good places to live were, and they stayed there, you know, And and they started learning to gather a lot more and and maybe a little bit of planting of things going on. Maybe he's planning some wild wild seeds and starting to know how to do this, developing that kind of knowledge. UM. But that allowed the Native Americans in North America a

lot more free time. And that's an important thing because when that happens, UM cultures start creating things of beauty, things that reflect their identity UM, who they are. And and that's that's important because the hope Well tradition that that kind of sprouted out in Indiana and Ohio and Illinois and Tennessee and Kentucky UM had its roots spread out all across the United States. They're they're bringing in obsidian from the western United States that can be found

in mounds in Ohio. Uh So the hope Well tradition was basically this idea that these tribes were coming together to trade. It probably was probably wasn't one group of people, but it was lots of groups of people that were interconnected by networks and trading and understanding UM. And so they're you know, they're bringing in mica from Georgia. They're bringing counk shells from the Gulf of Mexico, and and

pick and church from north central Arkansas. Uh They're bringing in the finest materials from everywhere, and they're trading things now and so things are more stable. Um, they've got a lot more access to to better food, more calories, better shelter. They're learning how to do things, and from that really erupted an artistic movement from Native Americans. That's that's wow. It's they make they would make um clay pipes that they would they were starting to use copper

uh to make plates and and ornamental objects. Uh, a lot of what we call effigies um. And effigy is a is a representation of usually an animal or a person. But they would turn those into into pipes and decorative objects and pendance and all kinds of things. So we have a lot of that knowledge and the Woodland period, which when when would the woodland time period have been? It probably would start around thirty years ago and maybe

go to about just like yesterday. Yeah, as it was, it was not it's it's still very old, but it's that it's much younger than these people that were chasing the mastodon um. And then you know, after this woodland period, the cities of North America started to develop and you know, you have to think about um, you know, poverty point down in Louisiana UH Mounds that were made over just east of Little Rock Toll Tech Mounds, and and and and you know the mounds up in in uh southern Illinois,

the Khokia Mounds. This really transitioned into the Mississippian period. It's called um people were living on much larger. Is that the final period? This is the final period before contact, last precontinent. Let me try this, Paleo Dalton archaic woodland Mississippi. You got it, man, I've heard those words my whole life and every it's real confusing unless you just, yeah, sit down and just do what we're doing here exactly.

And and it's taking me fifteen years of a lot of time to to learn all this stuff into and you know, to acquire a collection of points from all these different time periods so you can really visually see it. Well, it makes sense in front of it. And so the the woodland, would that have been the time period when the tribes begin to probably so build some identity and have names, right, I would say so they probably had

identities at that point. And and and they were interconnected in the using waterways to travel much easier with large amounts of goods things like that. And from that's when these big cities, you know, erupted, and that probably had a lot to do with the introduction from of maize from Central America. Now, corn's got calories. We all know that now, uh, and so we try to stay away from too much of it. But back then that was

a big deal. Calories are a big deal. And so when they started getting these extra calories, they didn't have to try so hard for food anymore. They could plan it and harvest it. And so they started building these mounds, one bucket of dirt at a time, and they built these huge cities. One of the things we don't know is why did these cities fall apart? What the social structure fell apart? And by the time Europeans got here, a lot of these cities had been abandoned for a

long time, so they were gone a long time. Did they build the mounds to keep out of the floods? Probably not. They probably had a hierarchical structure to their societies, like having a big mansion on the hill, you bet, and and the and the guy that was running everything or the girl I guess was living on top of that. Yeah, it was. It was so when Europeans got here, they found remnants of these cities just like today. You bet, yeah,

for the most part. Uh. You know, there are a lot of accounts of DeSoto coming across tribes in eastern Arkansas that are felt to be Quapaw uh or no Dina maybe tribes, um, but but they were kind of they were a little bit scattered by the end. They weren't living in these hues, so that there was a stronger population of people pre European settlement. Yes, I mean, like, yeah, I guess the idea, what I would think is that the Native American cultures were at their peak and then

Europeans showed up and broke it all up. But that's not necessarily it's not necessarily true at all. And in my mind, my my personal way of thinking about this is that by the time Europeans got here, Native Americans were almost in this post apocalyptic stage. Something happened, and they really don't know what happened in a lot of these large cities in places that existed, They really don't know if it had to do with disease or warfare

or a drought. Is that across the country. Um, I know you're talking about these Arkansas sites in the delta of our bet you bet you know you could get out into in a masa their day, uh and and see the Anasazi there there entire city that were carved into the walls of rocks. And these people just up and disappeared just in a very short period of time. There really nobody knows why. You know, it's a lot of these, but I think they're trying to get enough

information together where they can kind of put the puzzle together. Now. So that's that's eye opening to me. I I didn't realize that. So now we did. We don't get me wrong. We did some damage too, I tell you that. But but you know it was it was the last nail on the coffin, I think, you know. And well, hey, that that really helps me. That that breaks down all these periods in a pretty simple way. Um, I want to go back to the to the stone projectile point.

So there's all these there's lots of different things that you could find out here, you know, these axe heads or grinding stones. I mean there's they left. They used stone a lot, but they used to projectile stone point. Okay, we said at in the the closes period, they were just hand thrown spears. Then when we got into the Archaic period, they started using the addleaddle, which if you

don't know what add ale, let's go look it up. Well, it's just a it helps you throw a spear like twice as fast a t L A t L. Just google that and you get a visual of it. When did when did they get bow and arrows? Bow and arrows were very late development, probably not until the Woodland at least, and maybe the Mississippi in the adds. So for five thousand years they were using an Did the

bow cancel out the adladdle? No? Um? When Europeans got here, there were still groups of people in this country that we're using those. Uh it was so the bow and arrow had not completely replaced it um at all, you know, Okay, but the adeladdle would have been better for killing big stuff though probably so because it's a it's it's I mean, you're you're chucking a much bigger you're chucking a spear.

It's kind of like using a thirty yacht six for an elk and you know, using a two seventy for a white tail dear, I mean, pick your pick your weapon for what you're you know, know core, you know what's going to break it down. Where did the archery technology come from? That's a good question. Um did it start up everywhere all over the planet at the same time it had it? It did develop all over the

world and within a relatively short time span. Is that now you said convergent you talked about like, yeah, that's conversion evolution. Was that technology? That technology would have had to have been connected you think it would, but it had it started happening here at the same time that started happening. Where else? Did they have bows? Oh, they have bows and arrows in Africa, the Aborigines in Australia, Um,

you know, over in in Asia. All of these different aboriginals were using this technology at about the same time period. Nobody really knows how that happened. I mean, that's that's crazy. Because there was no email, there's no Internet. It would have had to have been human to human if if the technology was shared, would had to have been human to human contact aliens. I don't know. It means that somebody would have had to have gotten from North America

to Europe perfect. I mean, it's that really is such a mystery, or or maybe just in the progression. Like if you think of this is like a board game, and the board game is is that you're this human it's dropped onto this planet. You gotta make a living and you start napping stones together. Maybe there's some connection and progression there is of just what you would do. I mean is that do people say that? And and

that makes makes sense? So in theory you could like they could discover the same technology at the same time as here disconnected just because of the way they were living their life. Okay. You know if if two different cultures on the other side of the world, you know, developed a wheel at the same point, at some point they're gonna decide they're gonna hook two up together, so they both invented an axl, you know, it's the same type of thing. Yeah, I think it is a natural progression.

And it's also you know, necessity is the mother of invention. As the game got smaller and we pretty much eradicated a lot of the larger species here, there was a need to shoot uh smaller quarries also, which bow would have been good, right right right? And you know a lot of people call the types of arrows that that Mississippi and period people use bird points. And then you know, there a lot of a lot of things going around people saying that they use them to shoot birds. Well

that's not true. They just I don't know why they call them that, but they do. We call them arrow points because it was a true arrow point. They were shot on the bow and arrow. Um. Now the bigger so this would be a question I would have I have found small points that are like an inch long an inch wide, let's just say an inch by an inch Certainly that would have been connected to an arrow shaft possibly, but that's also large enough to be connected to a you know, a half inch wide shaft on

a on a dards. So yeah, only the smallest ones were probably uses true error points, but there's no way to know for sure. You know, um, there are there are historical documentation of of the type some of the types of arrow points that we know of today that we're being used on arrows when people got here, and so we know some of those point types were definitely being used on arrows. Yeah, okay, so we're talking about

stone projectile points. You said that there was a reason that they would have liked like this fluted Dalton point, and if if you're in front of a computer and listen to this. Just type in Dalton point. You can understand. We can describe it, but it's almost too hard to describe verbally to get a good picture. But what I want, what I want to step into now is the different types of points and get to this calf creek point. Okay, but start with the start with the Dolts or the Clovis.

Start with the Clovis. And why So it's a real specific technology. But why and and and our people understand that because we're bow hunters, and I mean we talked about broadheads all the time and different types of animals. I've been bo hunting for about twenty years twenty five years now, and I've seen the technology and broadheads changed dramatically in a very short period of time. You know, with with use, you understand what works and what doesn't,

what may be better. And there's a lot of different people out there experimenting to see what works better now. Um, But but they were doing the same thing. You know, they got back from a hunt, sat down and said, hey, what went wrong? And so somebody, somebody figured out a way to do something a little bit different in these clothes people. They were fluting their points. They were basically thinning the point at the base of the airhead the project where it was hafted onto the shaft of the

hafting element. And and most people believe that was to thin it out to make it where it was, you know, kind of lower lower the profile of the area of that shaft directly attached to the to the airhead's better penetration. Probably, So yeah, so that okay, So so that the because they would have her taking a stick split it shoved

this air this stone point down in there. Yes, And so if the air head at the base of it was super thick, then it would make that would fold out even further if it was thinner, So it was an issue of penetration. Then that's what most people believe and have believe for all the time. I've read a study that was done here fairly recently that showed that

the thinning they there. They believed that the thinning that the fluting was done because it lessened the likelihood that the point would break when it did penetrate an animal. There's some type of a shock absorbing property to thinning that point, like you know, that's that's still exactly. That's my point that those people weren't thinking, how can I make this, how can I design this? They didn't have a wind tunnel or any way of testing this theory

that I don't believe that. I really don't. I think they were trying to thin it down. Maybe maybe it's true, but that's not why they did right. Right, Maybe that happened, maybe that it did decrease the breakage percentage, whatever, but I don't think that's why they were doing it though. Yeah, so they you know, they progressed into Dalton points. Uh, things changed a little bit. Dalton points transitioned into probably twenty or twenty five different points. Did they did they

necessarily get better over time? Well, it depends on how you define better. Better means more if if better is more suited for your environment? Yes, by definition, because Dalton points were not what was needed during the woodland period, and so the points that were made during the woodland met their needs better than Dalton points would have. So you can only you can only surmise that the best point to existed with the technology. I guess the technology

never went backwards, No, and theyone never really did. Every everything changed, Um, so you get into the Archaic period, and you've got this early Middle and laid Archaic, And you wanted to talk about calf Creek points a little bit. Uh. They are that they're beautiful. They're very wide and can be long, but they're generally fairly short. And and they have notching deep notching that can be sometimes a half an inch or an inch deep that goes into the

base of the arahead. They're hard to describe um, but they're they're very unique. And and there are similar point types called Andus and Bell points that are found more down into Texas, but it's generally believed they're the same era ahead and they're the same projectile point um. But they're they're gorgeous points. They're unique. There's nothing like them anywhere else in North America. And then they're from right

here they are. They start up central in the we're kind of in the east central ozark Yeah, I would say. And and you know these points can be found up into central Missouri, down into north central and central Arkansas, over into northern Texas, northern Louisiana over and it comes as much of Kansas and Oklahoma. Also. These people we know we're hunting bison they were hunting bison with these, and for a long time it was believed that this was a knife type. It was not a projectile point,

and that's been disproven. And if you have internet access, you need to look this up. There was a calf Creek point that was found embedded in a bison skull, and and studies were done on it and it was authenticated. There's always a question when you find something like that, did somebody shoved that in there? But that it's been well studied and it's been proven to be the real deal.

So they were, they were chunking these things at bison and you met probably the most likely when when were these what period time period with the calf Creek of the Middle and late Archadic, so they would have been using that point. And so yeah, so this calf Creek technology is like way different. It would have u I think in modern terms, Adam, we would have called this almost like a barbed broadhead. A barbed broadhead by definition, means that the the blade of the point extends below

the point where the arrow touches the broadhead, right. I mean, there's regulations about it, like in Alaska and Idaho, you can't use the barb broadhead. Yeah, because the it's like where it goes down, so like on these calf creek points, the the halft's it seems like that with the blades have extended below where the halft went up, they most definitely would have sometimes even an inch. This is totally Barba Alaska. Well they they what that did is it is it increased the cutting edge on it and if

they can shove that thing into into there. You know, lethality is not necessarily always about penetration. Uh. It had a lot of times it has to do with how much stuff can you cut? These are wide right, and I've shot deer with a bow that didn't run nearly as far as a deer. And I've shot with a thirty ot six you know that went out the outside of the because you shoot, you shoot an arrow in there and it's cutting stuff. That thing bleeds out real quick.

A lot of times when it drops real quick if you can hit the a order or something like that. And so they were onto something, you know they were. These aren't real sharp points. Well when I say sharp, I mean like some of these, like the the closest points are like these long. They don't have an acute angle on the tip of it. I think it's kind of more around and around. Yeah, and and by the location where this you know, calf Creek Point was found.

In this bison skull um, it looks like it was trying to be and they were trying to shoot it in the back of the neck or maybe up in the neck area. I think they were onto Something's my my opinion. I think they were trying to cut it, you know, Okay, they were like this is where you want to hit one. They would have been just like,

that's like, this is where you shoot a deer. Why would you want to shoot a bison through the thickest part of the body, you know, where it's got a big hump full of fat, you know, when you've got to expose neck veins, you know, jug your veins, carotto arteries, things like that. You know. So that's my opinion for it, and just for just to say it, there would have totally been bison here. I mean, even even in the eight teen hundreds that were bison in Arkansas, you've been

elk and mountain lions and tons of crazy stuff. And I've read some really unbelievable numbers on how many bison at one time rome the United States. Uh, it was in the tens of millions. I mean maybe as many as eighty or ninety or a hundred million bison in North America. That's a lot. You know. Kind of debunked that greenhouse gas thing too from cows too, because there

were lots of yeah, putting out some greenhouse gas. So the Calf Creek though, uh, now wise Calf Creek, If there's Calf Creek other places, why do we know that it started here? Or is this like the epicenter of it? Really is the first place that these were described or found and described was it was in a cave up in Searcy County, Arkansas called Calf Creek Cave. It's also called Snowball Cave. It's it's actually has another name too,

I've heard too. But but Don Dickinson and archaeologist, did a lot of excavation up in hal Creek Cave and and found these there. Um and so he named the point type after Calf Creek. Uh. But this this and they found the technology and other places they did. Yeah, and so this area really if you were going to put a pin in the middle of the distribution, it

would probably be somewhere around Arkansas. I would say, yeah, if I can find one of those of my friends, I'm sure could, Yeah can and and and I've we've found a piece of one here at the Gray Side in in Iszard County. Yeah. Yeah, so they're here, you know, And and and they hunted primarily bison, you know, that's what they were doing. They were still that was their economy was bison hunting, you know. And that would have been in the period right right, probably middle and late Arcaic. Yeah,

um man, that clarifies a lot. That is awesome and perfect. Anybody that that there is that's listening, you ought to look up a calf creek projectif point, just to get a visual what that looks like. They're just absolutely you've got just five or six here, yea in your collection or maybe more than that. Yeah, and they're they're one of my favorites there. You know, anybody's got a nice calf creek and they're they're actually one of the more

valuable point types because they're so rare. Those ears that stick down so far they break. Uh, they're they're most often found broken, you know, how far if you if you have an intact calf creek point. You have a nice point. Yeah, that's something. Yeah, um man, that answers a whole lot of questions that I had. Is there? Well, let me transition into another another section. What about people finding points? How do you find stone points? There are

a lot of different ways to do that. Um I think a lot of people just walk creeks for some reason. You know, the sites that contain these points were on water. They were on creeks and floods come through and they rode out a bank and they wash into the creek and you and you find them and they just become a part of the creek system. They're just in gravel bars,

just rolling along. Would you say, this is the thought that I've had I found a few points in creeks, is that you find like gravel distributes based upon size, and creeks is based upon water. For like, you know, there's areas of a gravel bar, whether it's the big rocks, small rocks, fine rocks. So you look in the areas where there's the size rocks that would be the size of a projectile point. Is that right? Exactly right? Because they that that creek starts to filter out stuff based

inside it sure does. It's just like it's just like panting for gold. You start filtering out bigger stuff and then smaller and smaller, and eventually you work it down to you've got a layer of stuff and then it's got the gold dust. And same thing with air heads, once you figure out where you're looking. I've got a little nooking down here in my creek that I've been wanting to look at. It makes a hard, sharp right hand turn at the bottom of it. It's a lot

deeper there than it is just upstream. And all these rocks are are are layering down in the bottom of this as they fall out of the current. And so we're gonna get down there one of these days with a shovel and just and just take shovels full of that and and run it through the screen and see what you know. You know, it's it's trial and air. It's it's it's neat. So walk on creeks. That's one way to do it, Okay, what else? Um Walking fields that have been plowed for agriculture is another way to

do it too. That's probably the biggest, biggest it has been for the last hundred and fifty years. But that's changing a lot because they've gone to a lot of no till technology now, especially up in the in the Midwestern States. They're they're trying to conserve that layer of good dirt and so they're they're they're drilling stuff in now, a lot less of it now. But this is this is how a lot of this stuff got found. You know, old collection points that they would plow a field with mules.

And I've heard stories here in my yard where we find these points that they were actually plowing this field with mules and they would pick up these earrawheads and sometimes they were pretty good size and very sharp. They would put them in buckets and go dump them out somewhere to keep the mules from cutting their feet, you know. And they didn't even regard these things as being anything culturally important or valuable or anything. They were a pain

in their rear. You know. It's like finding a knock blade out in your yard and you throw it to the edge, you know, cut something get out of It's incredible. Yeah, yeah, I can't imagine that. You know, here's a question about plowing. How deep are these are? Because I've I've heard a friend of mine, a friend of ours over here, Paul Lee. There they do some digging on private land. You can't dig on public land. I gotta have you gotta have big, big, big, big,

big no notes. So that's But if you have private land and you have perbition a chair land, you can dig some of these limestone bluffs and stuff. And they're finding points like way deep in the ground. That doesn't make any sense to me. Yeah, it depends, um. You know, older stuff is deeper. That's the general coming. Sediment is just built up, and it kind of depends on how

fast the sentiment's building up. If you've got a creek that ever gets under the floodplain, you know of of a creek and it this overhangs getting flooded and silt and sands washing in there, it could be it could be stuff buried and right, it could be ten fifteen feet deep, but it may just be in is. You just don't know. Um. And so if you're looking for for place for places to hunt, you go into a cave, they say, And I've never dug a cave. I haven't

had that experience yet. But you go back to the back of the cave and dig straight down and you define how deep the artifacts are, you know, just dig dig it straight down. So but I haven't had the chance to do that yet. Well and and yeah, hopefully he'll hear this, Yeah, because my question was about like in your plowed field, like are you I mean there's a point where there just isn't anything below that it stop? Where is that? Uh? Different for everywhere it is, And

it's different even in this field here. Uh, some places we have found stuff down that it's probably two feet deep. In some places it's very shallow before you hit that clay layer that doesn't have anything in it. Kind of depends on the topography and what's erode it off, what's

washed off, and what hasn't. So it could be on the surface it could be two three ft deep, because it just depends, you know, because these people have been here for fifteen thousand years, thirteen thousand years, just sentiment changes, soiled builds soil. You know. One of the interesting things about this field here that I have at my house where we where we find points that ezer Kenny is not exactly well known for its high quality soil. You know.

Nowhere in those we've got a few rocks here, but this particular field has actually got really good soil and uh in. My opinion is is that it probably is an accumulated bio layer of occupation. Over a long period of time, these people were, you know, eating, and they had refuse and things like that, and it just builds up a good organic layer of dirt in it. It's just kind of strange walking creeks, plowing fields. We just talked about digging in overhangs, which is something that is

common in the Ozarks. Only on private land where you have permission. They'll throw you in jail. In public land, that's a big deal. So what what other ways do you find their flea markets? Let somebody else find out. No, yeah, you know, everybody in this county knows that I'm an airhead collector. So I find I have a lot of people come to me and you know, want me to look at their stuff. And so sometimes you find them

without having to set foot out of your house. But but going back to finding them other ways you can find them, you know, Liam you have any other ideas how you find them, it's what about like location? Because I'm I'm I'm actually formulating an article that I'm going to write about how to find stone projectile points. So I'm I'm take usurping resource from you to write my article. Uh, what about you told me that this like where you live. Describe to me why this is a good site because

right here just a random piece of property. You bought them quote unquote random to build your house here, and you found, i mean hundreds of stone projectile points and flakes, and well, what makes this good? Like if somebody were go out and find something like this on their own. My dad always told me good property is good property. And if it's good property now, it a good property ten thousand years ago. It's that it's got water on it.

And you know you've got some springs, You've got water, water holes, game, water makes things grow and it's flat, right yeah, And so you know you're looking for for places that have springs coming out of nowhere, good cold water that's running water. You know, those people knew that drinking stagnant water was probably not very good for you, and sure did, they sure did, And so they stay pretty close to water. And uh, and they lived close to water, and where they lived is where they drop things.

And so that's probably the number one. Now, the Paleo people were maybe a little bit different. If you're looking for for Clovis points or things like that, you're probably gonna be looking for um an area where they may have been trying to catch mammoth or masted on crossing a creek. In a really hilly area like this, there tend to be lower areas where animals still to this day cross the creek more frequently than they do. Then you know, they're not gonna go from one bluff over

to the other bluff. They're gonna go look for a low spot, and that's where they'd ambush these things where they can't get away. You know, they get them down in a lower area like that, and in water, you know, five feet of water is gonna make a mask of dawn a heck of a lot less tenacious than if he's up on his you know, getting more is weak. So that's that's where they find a lot of these is is lower areas creek cross and that's paleo. But

after that you're looking for springs. You're looking for water more than anything. You know, this is just a the way that I've found heads is uh, you've got to have bare dirt. You're not gonna find an air head underneath a layer of thick leaves. Out in the woods, You're not gonna find an air head under a layer of thick grass. And so like the places I deer hunt, the places I coon hunt. Last night I went coon hunt. I was looking for air heads the whole time on

cattle trails. And then like and and just wherever there's bared dirt, you have the potential to find an airhead. And as the as the soil washes away in these places where there's exposed dirt because of livestock or because up whatever it could be where they I mean, the first airhead I found on my property actually wasn't because of my mules. It was because I was pushing some

brush with my tractor and skinned up the ground. And like three weeks later after it rained and it washed the dirt, the surface of the dirt off I found ahead. So basically, just anywhere there's an exposed bank, creek bank, I've heard of people finding them on cut banks of a creek, you know, like the outside bend of a creek that where it's continually cutting. That happens a lot.

You'll you'll come across a cut bank like that and you'll see some flint or maybe some even some muscle shells, like discarded muscle shells or something like that that showed a habitation area, and then you know it's on you know that's where it is. Well, And that's another good point. And I'm formulating my article as we speak. Where like on my property, I find that we could go out there right now, and I guarantee we could find flint flakes.

I mean every time I walk out there and find flint flakes and there's no flint in in the area that I'm at. Mean, like in northwest Arkansas, right where I'm at, we've got sandstone and limestone. I mean that is right for what I know of there, that's all we have. They were getting their church and flint and stone materials from somewhere else, maybe not very far away. There's some places not very far away where they're getting it.

But so when I see like pink rocks and white rocks and pick it up and it's that smooth, flinty church, I mean that is the evidence of percussion napping, Am I right? So where you find if you can find flint flakes, then you know that you're you're you're in the Ballpark. And I learned this just because I watched a guy nap samara heads, is that there's a tremendous amount of refuse there is. I mean, like, so if you have one air to make one arahead, you would

have a See. I think that's something that I wouldn't have known unless I had seen somebody do it. So these little flakes that you find indicate that they of Americans were here. They were working on stone tools, and so there's surely intact stone tools somewhere. They're there. And um, you know this this flint in church that you're talking about, you're right there. The ose aren't mountains just don't have um certain types of rocks that they have in southern

Arkansas or out of Yellowstone Park. We we have sedimentary rock here. It's sandstone, it's limestone. It's not adequate for really any kind of tool that would be at rock would be That's exactly right. It's a sedimentary rock and it just gets compressed over time, and certain nodules of that would form within these layers of limestone and sandstone in the bluffs, and so that the white and metamorphic and probably so yes compressed by heat. You bet depressed

by heat and just sheer weight of limestone. But but these you know, in the White River, the river has been cutting through these limestone bluffs for so long it exposes a lot of these nodules. They fall out and no, just fall out and roll around in the river for a long time. They get a river. It's a cortex. It's called a brownish color on the outside of the rock. But if you take that brock and you break it open,

you don't know what you're gonna find. It may be black picking church, the most beautiful colored chirt you've ever seen. It may be some blue and white modeled looking pinter's shirt. And and some of these are really good at making by faces with because they retain a really sharp edge.

Tell me what a byfaces before? Yeah, byface is kind of a generic term for any uh arrowhead projectile point double side, two sides, yet it's generally both sides of it are napped, and so they're they're working on one side and turning it over and making it too faced. Um so yep, by face reduction technology and and and

that's what that's what you make are heads with. And and you know they had to find that kind of rock, and when they find a good source of it, they would go back to that source over and over and over again. And there are known quarry sites in you know, this area and all over the country, and they would have This was news to me just since in the

last few years. But they wouldn't so if they were, if they were trading and getting this stuff from other places, they wouldn't carry a twenty five pounds stone back fifty miles to wherever they were going to nap it. But they would make what do you call it? What they

would do, they would make up. What they would do is they take that rock and they knocked pieces out of it, and they probably would knock it down into a manageable, maybe hand sized piece of flint or church that they could put maybe put in a bag of some type and carry it with them. They would call that a quarry blank. It's a blank that they had quarried out of somewhere. And then when they so people find those a lot. I've got a nice blank. I

feel like it's probably a blank. It's it's about that big big rounds of baseball, Yeah, about half an inch thick, fairly developed but still pretty rough. So it was probably a blank that somebody just lost it, yea. And and a lot of times they would take those blanks and they would try to work it down into a nice point of some type. And there may have been what

they call a stack on there. There may have been a piece of rock inside that that they just couldn't get it knocked off their right and they finally just got mad and threw it down and said I'm move along to a different piece. So we find a lot of quarry blanks out here in in in my field too. And and sometimes they don't know why they lost it. Sometimes you can tell they were having a hard time

piece and working at particular piece got done with it. Yeah, you know, that's the interesting thing to think about, is why they all these how all these points got here. But yeah, some would have been broken while they were working on them. Someonel have been broken when they shot at something somewhere. Full pieces that just got lost somewhere. Yeah, I don't know. I guess some we're most most assuredly buried with people, you know. Yeah, you said they used

to do that. You bet they did. You know. Well, man, this has been uh fascinating. Thank you so much for let me come out. I mean, I just met you today. We we talked, we spoke on the phone this last week. Uh, we had to come over here to buy a squirrel dog, which is high priority stuff for us. Yeah, we had to come over in this part of the world. And man, I'm so glad we connected. You did exactly what I wanted to do. I mean, if no one listens to this but me, I'll be happy, But uh, they will.

This is this is really interesting stuff. And I think somebody could listen to this and have a really good picture. I know I have a much better picture of of of what was happening in the time periods and and the different even the dispersal of humans, the dispersal of technology. So anyway, well, thank you. I'm glad you came out. And it's it's always exciting to me to to to

to see anybody that's interested in this. And you know, when you're passionate about something and you really like something, you you can't wait to talk about it with somebody. So I'm glad you came up today. And and maybe you can get your boys into this too, and yeah, you know, on a on a personal note, with this, this this hunting that we do has really brought my family together. It's getting that my is off their phones. Uh,

it's getting them outside. We're seeing nature, we're walking, we're talking, We're interacting with each other. We're talking to each other. You know, this is a good thing. It's it's a good clean fund if you're doing it the right way and and really you know, you're you're learning a lot. It's a good thing. Yes, it really is. I mean we my boys have been super intrigued by finding these points in our front yard. Yeah, I mean, it just

unlocks this. It's just this mystery, you know, these humans that lived here before us, that we're hunting critters on our land and camping the Uh you know, well it makes you really think is that our land at all? It's their land? Maybe. Yeah, we're just on it now, just just temporarily. Yeah, staying a r right now. And I'm glad to have you up. I hope to have you back at here sometimes if you want to come back, we'll find some marriage together. That sounds awesome. And hey,

you just got me started. I mean, I'm we may do a follow up podcast one of these days with some more questions or hopefully get some skills today too, maybe show some people. So yes, I will. Well, so we'll put some we'll put some stills on our on our website. So on our website, we we'll have the podcast posted and and I will put some still photos of some of these points here in your library. Good doing there, for sure, good do. But hey, so this

is the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. So we have a closing thing that I always say so, and it's keep the wild places wild, because that's where the bears live, and that's where the Native Americans lived and the shot bears and ston't project off points. Yeah, thank you, thank you,