Short answers, pulled from the story.
Clovis culture is an archaeological culture from the Paleoindian period of North America, spanning approximately 13,050 to 12,750 years before the present. It is characterized by a distinctive toolkit, most notably fluted lanceolate stone points known as Clovis points, and was associated with highly mobile hunter-gatherer groups who hunted megafauna including mammoths and bison.
The type site for Clovis culture is Blackwater Draw locality No. 1, near Clovis, New Mexico. It was first identified in 1929 by nineteen-year-old Ridgely Whiteman, and the most thorough excavations took place between 1932 and 1937 under Edgar Billings Howard and later John L. Cotter of the Academy of Natural Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.
Clovis points are bifacial, fluted on both sides, with the fluting running up roughly a third to a half of the point's length. The largest points exceed ten centimeters. They were made from cryptocrystalline rocks using percussion and pressure flaking, and wear patterns show they functioned as both projectile tips and cutting tools.
Anzick-1 was an infant boy found near Wilsall, Montana, in 1968, and is the only known human burial directly associated with Clovis culture artifacts. His remains, dating to approximately 12,990-12,840 years before the present, were accompanied by over 100 stone and bone tools stained with red ocher. Genome sequencing shows he belonged to a population ancestral to many contemporary Indigenous peoples of the Americas, particularly those in Central and South America, and shares DNA with the 24,000-year-old Mal'ta boy from central Siberia.
The role of Clovis people in megafaunal extinctions is debated. Paul S. Martin proposed the "overkill hypothesis" beginning in the 1950s, arguing that human hunting drove Late Pleistocene extinctions. A 2012 survey in The SAA Archaeological Record found that 63% of archaeologists believed the extinctions resulted from a combination of factors, including both human hunting and major climatic changes at the end of the Pleistocene.
No. The "Clovis First" model, which held that Clovis represented the earliest human presence in the Americas, has been largely abandoned. Sites predating the oldest Clovis evidence include Cooper's Ferry in Idaho at approximately 15,800 years BP, Paisley Caves in Oregon at approximately 14,200 years BP, and Monte Verde II in Chile at approximately 14,500 years BP. The White Sands footprints in New Mexico may date to around 23,000 years ago.