Early Paleoindian women, children, mobility, and fertility

If we take the archaeological record at face value, the colonization of ung laciated North America appears to have been very rapid. The highly consiste nt dating of Clovis archaeological sires (11,500-10,800 B.P.) suggests that this continent was populated within a matter of centuries. To explain the spatial and temporal scales of this phenomenon, it is necessary to invoke b oth high mobility and high fertility rates during the initial colonization process. However it is widely believed that it is maladaptive for mobile fo ragers to have large numbers of offspring due to the costs of transporting those children. Thus, the archaeological record presents us with a paradox. Using a mathematical model that estimates the costs of raising children fo r mobile hunter-gatherers this paper asks the question-is high mobility com patible with high fertility? It is concluded that high mobility if defined as the frequent movement of residential base camps, is quite compatible wit h high fertility, and that early Paleoindians could indeed have been charac terized by high reproductive rates. Therefore, it is quite possible that th e Americas were populated very rapidly by highly mobile hunter-gatherers.