The Plains Archaic culture dominates the great midwest at this time. They remain essentially neolithic - North Americans won't develop copper technology for another 4000 years. They are nomads, not yet settled into permanent or semi-permanent villages. On foot, as the last of the North American
Equus species has been gone for millenia, alongside
Mammuthus, the glyptodonts, camelids, notungulates and the vast majority of North American megafauna who survived the great ice.
These people are different from the Clovis migrants, the Folsom people, and the Plano culture which preceded them. They have derived two signal innovations, and have undergone a third, more subtle change. Their great technological achievement represents the first true innovation in hunting technology since the invention of the spear: the atlatl, or throwing stick. There is speculation that this innovation was forced on them by the requirement to change their hunting tactics - the last of the naive megafauna,
Bison antiquus was hunted to extinction by the Plano peoples. A switch to the much more wiley and dangerous
Bison americanus, as well as the need to rely on smaller, fleeter game, rendered the old systems obsolete.
Their second great innovation was grain milling. For the first time in the archeological record of North America, the use of grinding stones and platforms becomes commonplace. Although still small and portable, and using wild vice domesticated grains, this innovation marks a shift from pure gathering to processed foods - the first step toward agriculture.
The third, less obvious cultural change was the establishment of fixed migration routes. Whereas they remained mobile and nomadic, there is evidence to indicate that this culture began returning to the same locations at the same times - the first step toward adopting a sedentary, settled existence.
Edited by Quetzal, : weird grammar
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