ANCIENT TOOLS FOUND

Ancient butchers' tools sophisticated
From a Boulder yard were excavated.
Thirteen millenia have come and gone
Since Clovis people cached these tools of stone.
To a museum most will be donated.


The Roanoke Times, 27 February 2009:

13,000-year-old tools unearthed in front yard of Colorado home

They were burried by the Clovis people, ice age hnter-gatherers who still are very much a mystery.

"DENVER -- Landscapers were digging a hole for a fish pond in the front yard of a Boulder home in May when they heard a 'chink' that didn't sound right."

"Just some lost tools. Some 13,00-year-old lost tools."

"They had stumbled onto a cache of more than 83 ancient tools buried by the Clovis people -- ice age hunter-gatherers who remain a puzzle to anthropologists. The home owner, Patrick Mahaffy, thought they were only a century or two old before contacting researchers at the University of Colorado-Boulder."

"'My jaw just dropped,' said CU anthropologist Douglas Bamforth, who is leading a study of the find. 'Boulder is a densely populated area. And in the midst of all that to find this cache.'"

"The cache is one of only a handful of Clovis-age artifacts uncovered in North America, Bamforth said. The tools reveal an unexpected level of sophistication, Bamforth said, describing the design as 'unneccessarily complicated,' artistic and utilitarian at the same time."

"What researchers found on the tools also was significant. Biochemical analysis of blood and other protein residue revealed the tools were used to butcher camels, horses, sheep and bears."

"The cache was buried 18 inches deep ... The tools were most likely wrapped in a skin that deriorated over time, Mahaffy said."

"'The kind of stone that's present -- the kind that flakes to a good sharp edge -- isn't widely available in this part of Colorado. It looks like they were storing material because they knew they would need it later,' Bamforth said. He believes the tools had been untouched since the owners placed them there for storage."

"Mahaffy wants to donate most of the tools to a museum but plans to rebury a few of them in his yard."

"'These tools have been associated with these people and this land for 13,000 years,' he said. 'I would like some of these tools to stay where they belong.'"