That specificity — the forensic precision of bone-in-bone — is what makes the Manis rib so powerful as a piece of evidence, and why the decades of controversy about it were ultimately resolved in favor of the hunting interpretation rather than any of the natural-process alternatives.

The Technology That Preceded Stone Dominance

The broader implication of the Manis bone point — an implication that is easy to overlook in the focus on dating and CT scanning — is what it says about the development of weapon technology in the early Americas.

The stone-tool record of the first Americans has led, quite naturally, to a stone-centric view of early American technology.

Clovis points are the icons of early American archaeology — they appear on the covers of books, they are held up as the defining cultural marker of the first well-documented Americans.