Archaeologica.org

This July, Jacques Cinq-Mars, a renowned archeologist living in Longueuil, is heading to Beringia - a vast territory that once spanned the Yukon, Alaska and Siberia - in hopes of resolving a controversy he unleashed nearly 20 years ago when he chanced upon a curious-looking cave in the Yukon's Keele Mountain Range, perched on a ridge high above the Bluefish River.

Here, at a site known as the Bluefish Caves, Cinq-Mars's team discovered something that would turn archeology on its ear and has fuelled debate ever since - a chipped mammoth bone that appeared to have been fashioned into a small harpoon point. Radiocarbon dating showed the bone to be 28,000 years old.

If he is right, his finds at the Bluefish Caves and even older mammoth bone flakes found by another Canadian team at nearby Beringian sites mean people were already trundling around in the Americas long before the Ice Age. (Radiocarbon dating puts the age of the mammoth bone flakes found by the Archeological Survey of Canada team at 40,000 years old.) Nearly 20 years after the initial mammoth bone find was publicized in the early 1990s, however, much of the archeological establishment remains skeptical about Cinq-Mars's discoveries in Beringia. His finds clash with a long-held view known as the "Clovis First" theory, which is based on 13,000-year-old spear points found near Clovis, New Mexico, in the 1930s.

The initial find of a mammoth bone spear point was made by archaeologist Jacques Cinq-Mars in 1978-79[1], but not radiocarbon dated and published until the early 1990s due to lack of funding. As the date of 28,000 y.b.p. obtained directly contradicts the Clovis-First theory which dominated New World archaeology until recent years, the research of Cinq-Mars was largely ignored by the archeological establishment, and he was unable to obtain funding for follow-up research until 2008[2].

Recently another team has discovered allegedly human-worked mammoth bone flakes in the Bluefish Caves area, radiocarbon dated to an even earlier period of 40,000 y.b.p.[3]

In 2004, the Clovis theory suffered another indirect blow when scientists in Siberia - in what used to be the western edge of Beringia - found a 30,000-year-old human site with tools fashioned from mammoth and rhino tusks.

The discovery showed humans had adapted to the extreme cold of the Far North thousands of years earlier than previously thought. It has also rejuvenated interest in Beringia, Le Blanc said. "If people got to the Arctic, I don't see why they couldn't have penetrated farther east." Meanwhile, Cinq-Mars has been amassing evidence from European researchers that shows chipped mammoth bones were used there as spear points more than 200,000 years ago - more evidence that the bone chips in Beringia were a widespread ancient technology.

And in July, Cinq-Mars plans to return to the region that ignited the controversy 30 years ago with hopes of finding more clues. He has received funds from the Yukon's Gwitchin First Nation in order to explore several sites, including the Bluefish Caves.

"There are layers there that have yet to be looked at which are likely to be older (than the original Bluefish find)," he said.

On the significance of modified mammoth bones
from eastern Beringia
J. Cinq-Mars
Canadian Museum of Civilization, Hull (Québec) Canada
jacques.cinqmars@sympatico.ca
SUMMARY: Focusing on Late Pleistocene evidence obtained from the Old Crow Flats and the Bluefish
Caves (northern Yukon Territory) and relying on finds made elsewhere, in both Eurasia and North America,
this paper will examine, in a historical perspective, the nature, significance and implications of modified
mammoth bone assemblages from eastern Beringia.