The fluted point--a finely crafted, oblong flaked stone, with a groove, or flute, carved down the middle, presumably to fit the haft of a spear--is the hallmark of the Clovis culture. Most archeologists believed it was invented in North America, after the Clovis people crossed the Bering land bridge from Siberia sometime toward the end of the last ice age. But this past August, Maureen King of the Desert Research Institute in Las Vegas, along with Russian archeologist Sergei Slobodin of the Department of Education in the Magadan region, reported the discovery of a fluted point in Siberia--the first ever found outside the New World.
King and Slobodin found the two-inch-long point (right) at a site called Uptar, 1,000 miles west of the Bering Strait. It was buried along with 36 other stone tools beneath an 8,300-year-old layer of volcanic ash. These artifacts are heavily wind abraded and weathered, says ...
