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Third Thursday Food for Thought Dinner and Presentation
October 18, 2018 @ 6:00 pm - 8:30 pm
On Thursday October 18, 2018, Old Pueblo Archaeology Center’s “Third Thursday Food for Thought” dinner will feature the presentation “In Search of the First Americans across the Greater Southwest” by archaeologist Dr. Vance T. Holliday at U-Like Oriental Buffet Restaurant, 5101 N. Oracle Road, Tucson. From 6 to 8:30 p.m. Free (Order your own dinner off of the restaurant’s menu).
The First Americans – the so-called “Paleoindians” – were the earliest hunters and gatherers to settle in the southwestern U.S. and northwestern Mexico. They lived at a time when the climate was substantially different than today – generally cooler and wetter – and when large mammals of thke Pleistocene epoch such as mammoth, mastodon, horse, camel, dire wolf, big cats, and bears were still around. Clovis type projectile points made by the earliest known Paleoindian groups in the region some 13,500-13,000 years before present (BP) have been found with the remains of mammoth and other extinct megafauna. Paleoindian sites of the Folsom culture that succeeded Clovis ca. 13,000-12,000 years BP are rare in southern Arizona and Sonora but more common on the Colorado Plateau of northern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico, in the Great Plains, and they are locally quite dense along the greater Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico and southern Colorado. By Folsom time most of the Pleistocene megafauna were extinct except for Bison antiquus, and Folsom people apparently became expert hunters of those now-extinct bison. Even younger Paleoindian sites of the 12,500-11,000 years BP era also are known from the Rio Grande region but they seem to be fewer than Folsom. By those late Paleoindian times the climate was significantly warmer and drier than during the Clovis or Folsom periods and human adaptive behavior was likely shifting toward more sedentary “Archaic” lifestyles with increased focus on plant gathering and use of local resources.
Reservations are required: info@oldpueblo.org or 520-798-1201. PLEASE WAIT TO HEAR FROM OLD PUEBLO WHETHER YOUR RESERVATION HAS BEEN CONFIRMED BEFORE ATTENDING because the Fire Code limits how many guests we can have in the restaurant meeting room. Reservations must be requested before 5 p.m. on the Wednesday before the program date. Guests may select and purchase their own dinners from the restaurant’s menu. There is no entry fee but donations will be requested to benefit Old Pueblo’s educational efforts.
20181018(v1)ThirdThursday-InSearchOfTheFirstAmericans_VanceHollidaydocx (flyer)