Prehistoric

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• Prehistoric
• People
• in Texas

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Clovis Culture

• The Clovis people lived over 12,000 years ago.
• Sometime about 9,000 years ago, their culture
  died out.
• This was probably due to loss of their food
  supply which was large game animals.
• This may have been caused by climate change.

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Clovis People
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Prehistoric Texans

• The Gault Farm archaeology site north of Austin
  was discovered in 1929.
• It gives us evidence of the ancient Clovis people
  who lived during the Ice Age and hunted large
  prehistoric animals with flint tools.

• Gault Farm Site

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• Archaeologists have discovered bones of these
  early people such as the Kennewick man.
• This is an artists guess at what he might have
  looked like.

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• The Gault site was rich
• in flint deposits.
• flint tools and bones of
• animals such as
• mastodons have been
• recovered at this site.

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Mastodon remains

• Working on a giant!

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Size of Mammoths, Mastodons and Sloths!
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Hunting Tools Mass Kills and Atlatls
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Other Evidence of Early Cultures

• Prehistoric peoples did not have written
  language.
• They left us information about the way they lived
  in drawings found in caves and on rock surfaces.
• Why do you think ancient peoples made these
  drawings?

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Paint Rock
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Paint Rock

• On a bluff along the banks of the Concho River in
  west-central Texas lies the most remarkable rock
  art site on the Edwards Plateau. The Paint Rock
  pictographs number over 1,500 and cover nearly a
  half-mile of a limestone cliff face a short
  distance upstream from the town of Paint Rock. In
  tones of red, orange, yellow, white, and black,
  native artists painted animals, such as buffalo
  and deer, human figures, some appearing to be
  clasping hands in a dance or ritual, and a
  kaleidoscope of geometric designs on the high
  bluff. Some left their handprints, perhaps as a
  way of signing their work or merely indicating
  that they had been there.