Folsom
The most famous of the ancient cultures is the Folsom whose name is derived from the town of Folsom, New Mexico, near which the first generally accepted American discovery of man-made objects associated with the bones of extinct animals was made.[25] Prior to this find, which was made in 1926, it had been believed that man had not reached the New World more than a few thousand years before the beginning of the Christian era. At the Folsom site, however, were found finely flaked projectile points in clear association with the articulated bones of a type of bison known to have been extinct for many thousands of years. These were fluted or grooved points characterized by the removal of longitudinal flakes from either face. Geological evidence from the Lindenmeier Site in Colorado, which was a camp site of the makers of the grooved points, indicates that the Folsom people lived between 10,000 and 25,000 years ago.[11] This conclusion was reached by correlating the valley bottom in which the site occurs with river terraces and moraines, which in turn could be related to glacial stages. A number of important discoveries of fluted points have been made in the Southwest. Two notable sites are the one near Clovis, New Mexico, and Burnet Cave in the Guadalupe Mountains.[65]
Fig. 2—Map of the Southwest showing sites referred to in Chapter II.
1. Burnet Cave 2. Clovis 3. Cochise sites 4. Folsom 5. Gypsum Cave 6. Lindenmeier Site 7. Sandia Cave 8. San Jon 9. Tabeguache Cave 10. Yuma