The Manis mastodon was older than Clovis by somewhere in the range of several hundred to approximately 900 years, depending on which Clovis dates and which Manis calibrated age estimate are used for comparison.

This was not a small difference.

In human terms, a gap of several hundred years represents many generations — enough time for major changes in population size, geographic range, technology, and subsistence strategy.

The Manis site was not just a slightly earlier version of Clovis; it was genuinely older, representing a period of American prehistory before the Clovis tradition as we know it had developed.

But the age alone, while crucial, was not sufficient to establish the hunting interpretation.