El Fin del Mundo (Spanish: 'End of the World') is an ancient
Pleistocene
The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...
site near
Pitiquito
Pitiquito is a small town in Pitiquito Municipality in the northwest of the Mexican state of Sonora.
Area and population
The municipal area is 11,979.96 km² which makes up 6.46% of the state total. The municipal population counted in 20 ...
in northwestern
Sonora,
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
. It features
Clovis culture
The Clovis culture is a prehistoric Paleoamerican culture, named for distinct stone and bone tools found in close association with Pleistocene fauna, particularly two mammoths, at Blackwater Locality No. 1 near Clovis, New Mexico, in 1936 a ...
period occupation dating around 13,390 calibrated years BP and was discovered during a 2007 survey.
El Fin del Mundo is one of the oldest Clovis sites in North America, roughly similar chronologically to the Aubrey site in
Denton County, Texas
Denton County is located in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 906,422, making it the 7th-most populous county in Texas. The county seat is Denton. The county, which was named for John B. Denton, was establish ...
, which produced a radiocarbon date that is almost identical.
Clovis hunters
In 2011, remains of
Gomphothere dating around 13,390 calibrated years BP were found. This was the first such association found in a northern part of the continent where gomphotheres had been thought to have gone extinct 30,000 years ago. In July 2014, it was announced that the "position and proximity of Clovis weapon fragments relative to the gomphothere bones at the site suggest that humans did in fact kill the two animals there. Of the seven
Clovis points found at the site, four were in place among the bones, including one with bone and teeth fragments above and below. The other three points had clearly eroded away from the bone bed and were found scattered nearby."
"Bones of elephant ancestor unearthed: Meet the gomphothere"
Science Daily
''Science Daily'' is an American website launched in 1995 that aggregates press releases and publishes lightly edited press releases (a practice called churnalism) about science, similar to Phys.org and EurekAlert!.
The site was founded by ma ...
, 14 July 2014
Bones of horse and bison, as well as horse teeth, were also found at the site.
See also
* Paleo-Indians
Notes
Bibliography
*Ferring, C. Reid (2001) ''The Archaeology and Paleoecology of the Aubrey Clovis Site (41DN479) Denton County, Texas''. (Center for Environmental Archaeology, Dept. of Geography, Univ. of North Texas, Denton
*Sanchez, Guadalupe, Vance T. Holliday, Edmund P. Gaines, Joaquín Arroyo-Cabrales, Natalia Martínez-Tagüeña, Andrew Kowler, Todd Lange, Gregory W. L. Hodgins, Susan M. Mentzer, and Ismael Sanchez- Morales. ''Human (Clovis)gomphothere (Cuvieronius sp.) association ~13,390 calibrated yr BP in Sonora, Mexico.'' Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111: 10972-10977
External links
*Vance T. Holliday, Guadalupe Sanchez
El Fin del Mundo, Sonora, Mexico
argonaut.arizona.edu
{{Pre-Columbian North America
Clovis sites
Archaeological sites in Sonora
Gomphotheres