Whiteman’s bones were in Blackwater Draw, which during the Pleistocene served as a wide, shallow regional drainage channel, a kind of long, slow-moving lake. As the Ice Ages ended, Blackwater Draw slowly dried up. The continuous flow of water turned into isolated ponds. Game animals congregated around the water, and hunters followed them there. By the time of Gilmore’s visit, Blackwater Draw was an arid, almost vegetation-free jumble of sandy drifts and faces of fractured caliche. In one of archaeology’s great missed opportunities, Gilmore walked around the area for an hour, decided that it
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