The First Americans; In Pursuit of Archaeology’s Greatest Mystery
by J.M. Adovasio and Jake Page
Modern Library, 2003.
Paperback. 330 pages.

This book is about the quest to find pre-Clovis (c. 13,000 years and older) inhabitants of the Americas. Professor Adovasio has an ax to grind in this book. He was the archaeologist in charge of one of the best-documented paleo-Indian sites in North America, the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Geological stratigraphy, as well as radio-carbon dating set the baskets and other objects uncovered at the site at well before the arrival of the first “official” inhabitants of America–the Clovis people–known for the distinctive fluting of their dart and spear points. This set Adovasio on a collision course with the powers that be in the tight-knit world of Amerindian archaeology, and the battles for acceptance–which are still apparently in progress–were and are acerbic and scarifying. This aspect of the book I found the least to my taste. Fortunately the authors wait until the last quarter of the book to bring these ego-clashes to the fore. The rest of the book sets forth a fascinating picture of the history of discoveries relating to the earliest inhabitants of the New World, as well as a reconstruction of what that world was like when mega-fauna, like the nightmarish Short-Faced Bear (Arctodus simus), preyed freely on homo sapiens. One point that surprised me was that everyday temperatures could be positively spring-like, even in the shadow of slow-moving glaciers, and that the Ice Ages created new ecological systems that forced both animals and plants to evolve new adaptions to their environment in relatively short periods of time. But for the personal attacks at the end, not matter how deserved, this is an excellent and entertaining read. Recommended.