It turns out that the first people to get in on Boulder real estate were the Clovis — a nomadic people who lived 13,000 years ago.
We know this from a cache of Clovis tools buried beneath the lawn of biotech entrepreneur Patrick Mahaffy.
The 83 stone implements — including bi facial knives and a tool resembling a double-bitted ax — were unearthed in May by a landscaping crew.
It is one of only two known Clovis caches. The other is in Washington state.
“There is a magic to these artifacts,” said Mahaffy, who backed a $7,000 analysis of the knife and ax blades.
Mahaffy said landscapers were digging out a space to build a fish pond when their shovels struck stone, unearthing the space where the tools had been buried. Reporting of the find was delayed until the analysis was complete, officials involved in the venture said.
The analysis by the Laboratory of Archaeological Science at California State University-Bakersfield found the blood of camels, horse and sheep, said Douglas Bamforth of the University of Colorado at Boulder, who has studied the items. “These are not hunting tools, so it looks like they butchered these animals, probably for food,” he said.
He said the Clovis probably buried the tools, planning to retrieve them later.
“The tools are made of Kremmling chert, which comes from the other side of the Continental Divide,” Bamforth said. “So even though we haven’t found the Clovis in Wyoming, we should keep looking.”
The New York Times contributed to this report.
