The Folsom Point, discovered near Folsom, New Mexico, in 1927, was crafted from
flint some 10 thousand years ago. Discovered on a joint expedition by
archaeologists from the American Museum of Natural History and the Denver
Museum of Natural History, this spear point stands among the most important
archaeological finds ever made on this continent.
This single point settled a longstanding difference of opinion about when the
first humans arrived in what we now call North America. Many believed the first
Native American cultures to be no more than 2 or 3 thousand years old, while
others believed that they were thousands of years older than that. With the
discovery of the Folsom Point, which was embedded in the bones of a bison known
to have been extinct for 10 thousand years, the disagreement was resolved: the
point was incontrovertible evidence that there were humans here as early as the
Ice Age. The real Folsom Point is displayed in a cast of the bones in which it
was embedded, re-creating the way this momentous discovery appeared to members
of the expedition.
Flintwork is the earliest American art known to archaeologists. In a testament
to its sophistication, it took modern archaeologists and flint collectors many
years to duplicate the technique used to produce the beautifully crafted Folsom
Point, and others like it.
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