Ask Ancient Digger a Question: What Did the First People in North America Eat?

Every so often I receive an email from a student looking for information pertaining to history or archaeology for a research paper. My latest question is about the first inhabitants of North America and what kind of subsistence system they had.

The Answer to: What Did the First People in North America Eat?

The first early Paleo-Indians migrated into North America around 13,000BC. Archaeological evidence suggests they were hunting megafauna like mammoths, mastodons and large game using Clovis points attached to a longer spear and fishing. There is also evidence of deer hunting as the Clovis points discovered where smaller and more narrow and streamlined for smaller game animals. Consequently, Pleistocene hunter-gatherer societies didn’t rely on one resource and remained diversified in the event conservation had to take place.

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Native Peoples of Florida
Hunter-Gatherers, Agriculture, and Global Warming

Florida's Native People

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Hunter gathers arrived in Florida close to 12,000 years ago when the Florida land mass was much larger and drier. Mega fauna and mammoths were hunted in great herds and grains, nuts, and berries were gathered during seasonal roving. Spears were used to hunt and leather bags were used to cook what was captured, using hot stones. You may know these early tribes as the Paleo-Indians.

Close to 8000 years later, the ice caps started to melt and Florida became what it is today. The Native Peoples started to develop new technology, like the atlatl, a s... Read this article about Native Peoples of Florida