The Ancient Weapon Found in a Washington Farm Pond in 1977 Was Still Stuck in a Mastodon's Rib

🔔 Subscribe for new documentaries on North American history, told from the original records, the archaeology, and the Nations' own accounts. On August 8, 1977, Manny and Clare Manis were digging a pond on their land in Happy Valley, just south of Sequim, Washington, when the backhoe struck two long curved shapes in the peat. Clare thought they were old cow horns. They were mastodon tusks. Within weeks, Washington State University archaeologist Carl Gustafson washed the mud off one of the animal's ribs and found a sliver of foreign bone driven into it, with new bone grown around the wound. The mastodon had lived for months with a broken spear tip in its side. For more than thirty years, that rib was doubted. It challenged "Clovis First," and careful skeptics had real reasons to question it. In 2011, CT scans, DNA and radiocarbon dating in Science placed the mastodon at about 13,800 years old and showed the point was carved from mastodon bone. In 2023, a micro CT study rebuilt the point from 24 fragments still locked inside the rib. This is the homeland of the Klallam. The Jamestown S'Klallam, Lower Elwha Klallam and Port Gamble S'Klallam tribes live here today, and their own history of those same years runs right beside the dig. The sentence Clare Manis spoke in 2011, the most human thing anyone has said about this rib, is in the video. If you are drawn to ice age archaeology, the first peoples of the Americas, mastodons and Pacific Northwest history — this documentary reads the original record, gives the skeptics their full due, and leaves the Klallam story to the Klallam. 📚 SOURCES (all public, check them yourself) • Waters, M. R., et al. "Pre-Clovis Mastodon Hunting 13,800 Years Ago at the Manis Site, Washington." Science 334, 2011. • Waters, M. R., et al. "Late Pleistocene osseous projectile point from the Manis site, Washington." Science Advances 9, 2023. • Gustafson, C. E., D. Gilbow, R. D. Daugherty. "The Manis Mastodon Site: Early Man on the Olympic Peninsula." Canadian Journal of Archaeology 3, 1979. • Grayson, D. K., and D. J. Meltzer. "Revisiting Paleoindian exploitation of extinct North American mammals." Journal of Archaeological Science 56, 2015. • Haynes, C. V., Jr., and B. B. Huckell. "The Manis Mastodon: An Alternative Interpretation." PaleoAmerica 2 (3), 2016. • Peck, A. M. "We Didn't Go Anywhere: Restoring Jamestown S'Klallam Presence..." Journal of Northwest Anthropology 55 (1), 2021. • Chew, Jeff. "Sequim mastodon proves human habitancy 13,800 years ago." Peninsula Daily News, October 22, 2011. • HistoryLink.org Essay 8511, "Emanuel Manis finds mastodon tusks in Sequim on August 8, 1977." • Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe, "Jamestown S'Klallam History"; Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, "Tse-whit-zen." • Montler, T. Klallam Dictionary. University of Washington Press, 2012. 💬 Do you think a single healed rib should have been enough to overturn "Clovis First"? We read every comment.