Page 14 - Sentinel Septemberl 2017

TO STURGIS Continued from page 12 extinct in North America. However, more recent studies indi-
cate that 75 to 90 percent of the megafauna were extinct be-
little kids cheer as you ride by. Many spectators display signs fore humans arrived. It was the end of the Ice Age. Earth was
acknowledging what veterans have done. But ALL participant changing. Current studies are crediting climate change for the
riders will feel the love.
extinctions, with some help of the human kind. In a real stroke
of irony, a few horses escaped the North American hunters and
As a veteran, this ride means a lot to me. When I see all the headed across Beringia going west—away from their native
supporters cheering us on, it makes me VERY PROUD to have land. It would be almost 10,000 years before they returned with
served my country and to be acknowledged. To be totally hon- the Spanish.
est, I get goose bumps as we pass the groups of spectators. If I
wasn’t supposed to be such a tough guy, I might let a tear slip These Paleo hunters are known by tools.
from my eye, but I’d probably claim that I got hit by a bug.
Some of the earliest of the migrants in
our part of the country made what is
Upon arriving in Cripple Creek, all the riders are treated as known as the Clovis
heroes. The streets are packed with people who are cheering, point, dating back
waving flags, and enjoying the largest procession of motorcy- to 11,500 B.C. Clo-
cles in the state of Colorado each year. An enormous American vis points have been
flag is draped across the main street, and everyone is celebrat- found in situ in as-
ing the freedom of life in America. Sturgis is cool, but this ride sociation with mam-
into Cripple Creek is AWESOME. You can read more at this moth skeletons. But
web address: www.theveteransrally.org.
Clovis Point styles change—even
in spear heads. Folsom points, a bit more
WE WALK IN THEIR FOOTSTEPS... delicate than the Clovis, are found widely
Karen Dale... across North America and are dated to the Folsom Points
later period between 9500 B.C. and 8000 B.C. An even later
The Paleo-Indians style of prehistoric points is called the Cody complex and in-
cludes several different configurations.
Starting about 30,000 years ago
waves of pre-historic peoples, Douglas County has three excavated Paleo-Indian sites, one
traveling in small groups, mi- north of us and two east of here. No doubt the groups also
grated from Siberia to North camped and hunted in the Larkspur area, along what we now
America, probably across the call the Rampart Range, but there are no professionally certified
Bering Strait land bridge between excavations. However, there are arrowheads to be found!
current Alaska and Siberia. There
are several other theories that take The most famous Paleo-Indian site near us is Lamb Spring,
issue with the Beringia route, but between Platt Canyon Road and Chatfield Reservoir. Lamb
by and large, paleo-archaeologists Spring is a pre-Clovis Paleo-Indian archaeological site with the
agree most of the North American aboriginal people crossed largest collection of Columbian mammoth bones in Colorado.
the once-upon-a-time land bridge and spread south along the The 1960-61 excavation found the bones of at least five mam-
Pacific coast or eastward across the Canadian Plains. When is moths, one of which was radiocarbon dated as slightly older
still under discussion. One of the latest theories is that for some than 13,000 years, suggesting that the animals visited the spring
15,000 years people actually lived on the land bridge, thus toward the end of the last Ice Age. After the Ice Age mammoths
escaping the intense cold in Asia, and moved into the North became extinct, and the horses and camels left for different
American continent only as the Ice Age began to wane, about climes, bison and pronghorns were still plentiful. Lamb Spring
15,000 years ago. was a hunting ground into modern times.

These Paleo Indians reached the tip of South America about I can’t tell you how to get to Lamb Spring. I’ve been there, but
13,000 years ago. Evidence of human activity at Monte Verde it was back in the eighties when new excavations were taking
in the southern Llanquihue Province of Chile dates to around place. I was doing an article on Douglas County archaeology
12,500 B.C. These migrations of small groups of hunter-gather- sites, and I was able to visit the site, but the archaeologists made
ers continued for thousands of years. The Inuit of Alaska and me promise not to tell a soul where it was! In those days it was
northern Canada were late arrivals, coming as the Ice Age end- fairly inaccessible anyhow. There was this dirt road somewhere
ed about 11,000 years ago. off Hwy 85...

When groups arrived on the Front Range of the Rocky Moun- However, in 1995, The Archaeological Conservancy purchased
tains, they were following game, but what game it was: mega- the site to safeguard it from development, and in 1997 Lamb
fauna bison, camel, horse, mammoth, pronghorn—even giant Spring was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
beavers. An early theory was that the Paleo hunters were so
efficient that mammoth, camel and horse, all native, became Continued on page 15
Page 14 - September 2017 Perry Park Sentinel