Posted on 06/28/2010 9:57:49 AM PDT by Palter
For Darrel Higgins, finding an ancient arrowhead in a creek isn't surprising, it's actually expected. Finding a record-setting artifact that dates back to an estimated 14,000 to 18,000 years? Definitely unexpected.
Higgins has been hunting creek beds for artifacts since he began finding them on farmland when he was a child. But nothing he had found compared to the 9 3/4 inch by 2 3/4 inch specimen he recently found in western Kentucky. The item, described as a clovis point made of buffalo river chert, was submerged in a creek bed when Higgins stumbled upon it.
“As soon as I picked it up, I knew what I had,” he said. “It's usually a long walk back to my truck. Not that day, I was walking on air.”
Higgins was reluctant to specify where he found the clovis, but said he immediately went to his long-time friend and artifact expert Tom Davis in eastern Kentucky to have the item authenticated. Davis dated the clovis back to the days of when prehistoric man roamed the earth and hunted large game. By measurement, it sets a North American record.
“There are some skeptics because of the size of it. But it's a record. There's one as long found in Washington state but it's not as wide,” Higgins said.
Higgins had it authenticated again during the Genuine Indian Relic Society show in Temple, Texas and was able to show it off to enthusiasts. He said he has had some buyer interest but is looking for the right price to take it off his hands. It currently is securely locked away.
“It's worth as much as someone is willing to pay and as much as I am willing to take,” he said.
The process of discovering an item that has been buried for so long is mainly fueled by rain and erosion. Higgins said that arrowheads, spearheads and other artifacts were left behind or lost at campsites and kill sites near creeks. A creek served as a source for water for early man as well as a place to find wild game to hunt for food.
Over time, the sites were covered up. As the creeks have changed paths and continued to cut through the earth, portions of the sites have become exposed, bringing the artifacts back to the surface.
“Erosion washes away the dirt, especially after deep rains. A deep freeze followed by a deep rain knocks chunks of dirt off and then a second or third rain exposes anything in the dirt,” Higgins said.
To find artifacts, Higgins walks up and down creek beds while keeping his eyes locked on the ground. He doesn't dig or excavate, but looks for what the rains and water have exposed. His eyes are trained to look for perfectly straight edges and sharp points among the rocks and pebbles.
“Creekwalking,” as Higgins calls it, now takes up most of his free time. A typical day of creekwalking could take anywhere from five to ten hours and empty a tank of gas as he travels around the region.
“I've hung up my (fishing) rods and guns a long time ago,” he said. “You don't always find stuff but you can't get discouraged.”
Higgins lives in Hickman County but said he has found items in the Lynn Grove area of Calloway County and knows people who have uncovered artifacts in the Clarks River. As he has collected items over the years, he has sold some and kept others, but is always looking for more.
“As soon as you spot one it's like a time warp. You wander back through time and think about when it was used and when it was lost,” Higgins said.
Big spear tips impressed the women.
Clovis points are spearpoints all. The bow was not used until sometime after those people.
15,000 years and still pristine?
The usual course of finding artifacts in streams and along hills or on top of the ground is that they erode out over time after having been buried for most of time. This spear point if it is not a hoax, could easily have washed out of a creek bank during the last heavy rain storm.
Incidentally, I went to a small local museum in western North Carolina. They had an exhibit of many points dating 7 to 8,000 years old. They were all much smaller. This one would obviously be suitable for very large game, which would have been killed by the giant boloid event hypothesized by Firestone, et al. about 13,000 years ago. Sunken Civ, please post this if you have not already done so.
Yup.
Thanks gleeaikin, already pinged GGG, maybe this would make a good Catastrophism ping, but it’s probably too much of a sidebar to quite make it (for now). :’)
Thanks blam for that link, I’m checking it for the GGG update message now.
Spear point. A human who could use that for an arrow head would have to weigh a thousand pounds.
Spear point. A human who could use that for an arrow head would have to weigh a thousand pounds.
IMHO this point was most likely for ceremony,,,
I also think it came from a gravesite...
Why assume it was a throwing spear? Spears are also useful as thrusting weapons, with the bonus of not throwing your weapon away.
That is a LOT of walking!
Maybe he means he tanks up on this, before leaving:
That'll fill your tank with gas!
The hardness of a stone has very little to do with its susceptibity to breakage. Diamonds are the hardest known stones but they split easily when struck parallel to a crystal face. Most glass is harder than steel -- try scratching some with a knife -- but it breaks easily. Jadeite is quite soft (fairly easily scratched) but it's the toughest of all stones because it has an interlocking fibrous structure. That made it the ax material of choice by early human toolmakers.
Quartz family materials like chalcedony, jasper, agate, flint, chert etc. share the property of conchoidal (shell-like) fracture, as does obsidian (volcanic glass). That makes them very suitable for controlled flaking into arrowheads and spear points. It also makes it highly unlikely a pristine example like the spearpoint in question would survive undamaged and relatively unweathered for thousands of years.
There's always the possibility the point was buried deeply and was found before rough stream action could damage it. I hope so. But I'm skeptical.
I do understand what you’re saying and bow to your expertise. I do know though that what we find has survived for thousands of years in some cases (I think) around a spring that is used by range cattle. It seems that some are unearthed by wind or rain or perhaps the cattle overturning rocks and dirt that amaze me in their condition.
That said, I’m strictly amateur at this.
When I was younger I found many beautiful black obsidian points in the sandhills of east Idaho near Blackfoot. Many survived intact because there hadn't been any destructive erosive forces except maybe a horse or lost cow's hoofprint. One of the biggest finds of Anglo-Saxon gold objects took place recently in a much-plowed field in England. There was remarkably little damage from hundreds of years of farming, cattle pasturing and land cultivation. It's a wonder that they lay, some on the surface, that long without being noticed.
So I don't call the spearpoint discoverer a fraud. I just want better proof.
I am really curious how this type of thing is authenticated- since I have an uncle that makes arrowheads and things of that type and does them the same way they were made at the time. The obsidion or flint used might be dated and I could understand if modern tools were used it would prove an item a fake but if it was done as it was in the past how would anyone really know for sure? My uncle tells people he made the stuff he has but what if a person was less than honest? I do realize artifacts do turn up that are truly amazing- a cowboy friend of ours got off his horse one day to answer a call to mother nature and found an awesome stone (peace?) pipe.
Obviously he has some chorizo, er, choices to make. Great, now I’m hungry.
Bingo. This one was for thrusting. As a field archaeologist for 33 years, I have recorded more than several Clovis points. In one part of New Mexico we surface collected more than 15 Clovis points off of one site. Amazingly, all were around 3cm, or approximately 1 1/2 inches!
My personal theory is that these paleo people were not hunting mega-fauna, but rather smaller game. Coincidentally, the area I mentioned is just South of the furthermost southern point reached by the glaciers. Clovis, NM is located just about 200 miles North of our site, and the points recorded there are much larger.
I read a lot of conjectural stuff on this thread that I would like to correct, but I just do not have the time. I will say, however, that I know people who can knock out a point just like that one in 30 minutes. I spent one summer with him working on a project in the Florida panhandle, where he would sit on the beach on our days off and knap points for sale to the tourists. No one, including me, could tell the differences from any points he made from original aboriginal artifact materials.
It took him about 30 minutes to knock out a large clovis, which he usually sold for 30.00. Smaller points from Mississippian to Archaic went for 5 bucks. There are a lot of people who can replicate those points, and I am not talking about the cruddy, busted, angular crap that one can buy at a tourist stop. I repeat, there is no way, except in very few cases, that you can certify a projectile point as authentic, unless it is found within the cultural matrices (stratigraphic context) of a site.
There aren`t any thin parts in that spear head and flint is a strong and durable rock that probably wouldn’t chip. Also its a thick piece so as soon as it eroded from the bank it sunk to the bottom and staid put. So this is a real spear head.
“To find a complete undamaged point that’s been eroded out in a rocky stream bed is highly unlikely.”
My girlfriend’s family has been finding complete arrowheads in the creeks around their farm for over 50 years. I was skeptical about it until I went with them one day when a nice one and a bunch of broken pieces were found.
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