Ask Ancient Digger a Question: What Did the First People in North America Eat?

Every so often I receive an email from a student looking for information pertaining to history or archaeology for a research paper. My latest question is about the first inhabitants of North America and what kind of subsistence system they had.

The Answer to: What Did the First People in North America Eat?

The first early Paleo-Indians migrated into North America around 13,000BC. Archaeological evidence suggests they were hunting megafauna like mammoths, mastodons and large game using Clovis points attached to a longer spear and fishing. There is also evidence of deer hunting as the Clovis points discovered where smaller and more narrow and streamlined for smaller game animals. Consequently, Pleistocene hunter-gatherer societies didn’t rely on one resource and remained diversified in the event conservation had to take place.

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