Presentation looks back 11,000 years to the earliest Montanans

When did the first people arrive in Montana? And where did they come from?

University of Montana Professor and author Douglas MacDonald will explore those questions at this month’s meeting of the Northwest Montana Westerners, a local history group. The event is 7 p. m. Monday, June 15, at the Northwest Montana History Museum.

MacDonald will look at archaeological discoveries like the Anzick child, who was uncovered near Wilsall, Montana, in 1968. The burial has been dated to 10,900 to 11,000 years ago, making it even older than the famed Kennewick Man.

Based on stone tools found with the 2-year-old boy, he was part of the Clovis people. Clovis’ lance-like blades, with their fluted grooves, have been described as the finest projectile points ever made.

Since the tools resemble those made in ancient Europe, a theory was briefly floated that Native Americans had ventured across the ice packs of the North Atlantic. But genetic studies confirmed they came across the ice-age land bridge from northern Asia.

Other questions remain, says MacDonald. When the early humans ventured south from the sub-Arctic, did they come down along the coastline, now buried under modern sea levels? Or did they follow a growing ice-free corridor in the continental ice cap?

And who were these people who regularly hunted mammoths, giant sloths, camels and rhinoceros?

A handful of archaeological sites have revealed signs of the early Native Americans, he notes. The most mysterious is White Sands, New Mexico and its footprints. Radiocarbon dating of seeds in the footprints pushed the arrival of humans to 23,000 years ago.

The Anzick site was discovered accidentally by two Wilsall residents digging rock for a septic system. They ran into an unusual red powder that proved to be red ochre, a mineral that tribes used as ceremonial coloring. Further digging uncovered 150 stone and antler tools, and then ochre-coated bones. After the studies were completed, the skeletal remains and associated tools were reburied in 2014 in a ceremony presided over by Montana tribes.

MacDonald is the author of several books about early Native Americans, including "Before Yellowstone: Native American Archaeology in the National Park" and "Land of Beginnings: the Archaeology of Montana's First Peoples."