Earliest Settlers in North Dakota

We are talkin' ear-r-r-rly settlers, as in 5500 B.C. to 400 B.C.  Now, this is positively before Al Gore came up with Global Warming, but during this time it was very dry and warm around Pembina.  From an archeological dig in the area a part of a jaw bone was found and forensic anthropologists came up with this representation (like they do on the TV show, "Bones,") of what the woman that jaw bone belonged to might have looked like:

Her menfolk hunted with a nifty weapon called an atlatl.  Our sons learned about the atlatl in a church summer survival camp when they were teenagers.

The atlatl is a spear-throwing tool that uses leverage to achieve greater velocity in dart-throwing.  (Mightly long dart!)  It pre-dates the bow and arrow.  There is a notch at the back end that you rest the dart or spear on:

They may not have known what "leverage" was, but they surely knew what worked.  The foot long throwing device allowed the hunter to throw a spear the length of a football field at a speed of sixty mph!  The additional velocity would be absolutely necessary to bring down something as large as the American Bison much less a Wooley Mammoth.  (Do you know what the daddy buffalo said to his son when he went off to his first day of school?  Bi-son!   Thank you, my Facebook friends!)

(I don't know why they depict that woman with such a not-happy look.  Surely even back then there were things worth smiling about.  Smiling keeps you healthy.  Everyone needs to smile more, hence the bison joke. :-)