Testing the Sticky Black Water

On the snow-swept prairie of North America between fifteen and eleven thousand years ago, one of the earliest Americans sticks a spear shaft into that pool of mucky black liquid near his encampment. Whatever he’s thinking when he’s doing it, he ought to pay more attention to his immediate surroundings. There could be a Smilodon stalking him! 😉

This scene was originally going to take place somewhere in what is now the Los Angeles area of California, with the guy being based on historic Native peoples of California like the Tongva and the asphalt pit representing one of those at La Brea. Later on, I decided I wanted a more quintessentially “ice age” backdrop with lots of snow and ice and maybe some woolly mammoths and bison in the background, so I switched the setting to somewhere in the northern Great Plains. Maybe they’re somewhere near the petroleum reserves of central Canada?

Additionally, I’ve always wanted to juxtapose Native Americans like those from the iconic Plains cultures (e.g. the Lakota, Cheyenne, Comanche, etc.) with Pleistocene megafauna like the mammoths and sabertooths. People forget that the human hunter-gatherers who would have settled among these animals wouldn’t have all looked like stereotypical cavemen in simple fur togas or loincloth. Some of them might have looked like the foraging groups known today or recorded in historical times.

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