The Broader Pre-Clovis Landscape

By the time the 2023 Science Advances paper was published, the Manis site was not an isolated pre-Clovis anomaly.

It was part of an increasingly well-documented pattern of human presence in North America before the Clovis horizon — a pattern that had been building for decades and that, by 2023, had become the mainstream view rather than a minority position.

The sites that populate this pre-Clovis landscape vary widely in the nature and quality of their evidence.

Some, like Monte Verde in Chile, are established through the preservation of organic materials — wood, animal hide, food remains — in a waterlogged site that would have been exceptional anywhere in the world.