Prehistoric People in Texas

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.

Clovis People

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

• Archaeologists have discovered bones of these early people such as the Kennewick man.

• This is an artist’s guess at what he might have looked like.

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

Mastodon remains

• Working on a giant!

Size of Mammoths, Mastodons and Sloths!

Hunting Tools: Mass Kills and Atlatls

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?

Paint Rock

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.