FAQ: Are most or all sites in

North America the same?

There are two answers to this question.

If you are asking about the age, the answer is no. If you are inquiring about the artifacts at them the answer is still no.

When I lived in the south part of the U.S., the Florida panhandle, it would be a common joke to say some neighbor considered it a long trip and news worthy if they made a trip into the city to see the relatives. Even with the city less than fifty miles away.

With early man it would have been much the same, only the next habitation site may have been only a short distance up the river or hundreds of miles distant. Archaic man is believed to have begun his era as a family unit.

In such a pattern of living your ways and ideas have only a small chance of spreading. As happened in the museum paper "fiber cords". A ingenious advancement by residents in one shelter may never travel any farther than the family midden, today our trash dump.

For this reason artifacts, tools, points etc. can very easily change drastically in only a short distances between sites. Fortunately for man he still had the wanderlust from the early days of being a big game hunter. With the urge to travel he would soon spread his ideas to other sites.

This spreading of ideas would be the first evidence of trade having it's start. Unlike the term trade as we use it in modern time, this trade was no more than an exchange of ideas.

There are times, when this uniqueness of a site, help us follow the influence of a new craft.

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