They spread across the continent rapidly, pursuing the abundant and naive megafauna that had never encountered human hunters.

They were the first Americans.

This narrative was elegant and, for a long time, defensible.

No site clearly predating Clovis had been accepted by the mainstream of the field.

The Clovis points, which required sophisticated flaking technique to produce correctly, suggested a level of technological development that pointed to an established tradition — not a population improvising under pressure, but skilled artisans producing a refined tool that had been honed over generations.

And the extinction of the North American megafauna — the mammoths, mastodons, giant ground sloths, short-faced bears, and dozens of other species that disappeared within a few thousand years of the first human arrival — correlated neatly with the spread of Clovis people across the continent.