Thoughts on the First Americans In my wanderings of our local area I find a notable lack of arrowheads and a wide variety of tools consistent with a culture that maybe used bone and ivory for spearpoints and large flint choppers, scrapers, gravers, and uniface blades as their primary tools. In fact I think they would likely run their prey off the many cliffs  in this area, wait for them to expire and cut them up using the tools they had.  I find that its rather easy to spall off an extremely sharp tool by whacking a flint nodule.  The resulting spall looks very similar to ancient artifacts except for the 14,000 years or so of patination. The primary chert/flint in Northwest Alabama is Fort Payne Chert.  When freshly spalled the best material is a shiny black with light grey or blue inclusions. This material ages relative to how its been exposed over the millinia.  I find that material from creeks (with high iron content) generally turns a tan or rich brown.  Breaking an old artifact reveils the shiny black material.  An artifact from a surface find that has not been in a creek is generally a grayish to white color.  Recently disturbed ground from plowing or road work depending if the artifact was interred quickly originally is generally closer in color to the parent material.  I do occasionally come across some colorful materials and I think they were brought in for trade purposes from other areas. So I think that patination is a result of varing degrees of oxidation/mineralization of the surface. I also feel that the early Americans made good use of the many waterways in Northwest Alabama.  Some of their tools (raybots in particular) may indicate extensive woodworking. In some areas I find no points or fluted material, only large choppers, knives, and wedge shaped cores maybe of the Beringian culture.   Might this indicate an earlier preclovis occupation? Time will tell as we are only at the beginning of understanding early man in the Americas.