Prehistory

The earliest people appear to have come to Wyoming from Asia about 11,000 years ago and archaeologists now think there’s a good chance the people were direct ancestors of Shoshone people who live in Wyoming now. In recent years, the mostly white archaeologists have realized it makes sense to ask Shoshone people for help understanding the pictures and carvings their ancestors left on the rocks.

Medicine Lodge State Archaeological Site, northeast of Hyattville, contains pictographs and petroglyphs left by Wyoming’s ancient people, as well as an attractive, state-run campsite and small museum. Archaeologists have found evidence at the site of human habitation stretching back 10,000 years.

Legend Rock, about 30 miles northwest of Thermopolis, Wyo., features nearly 300 images carved or pecked into a rock cliff by ancient peoples over thousands of years.

The Finley Site, located near Eden in Sweetwater County, Wyo., was used by early American Indians to trap and kill bison. The Finley Site is an early Holocene Paleo-Indian bison-kill and processing area, dating back about 7,500 to 12,500 years before the present. This was the first place where Eden points and two kinds of Scottsbluff projectile points were found together, showing that the three were contemporaneous. The Finley Site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Remains of at least seven mammoths, probably from a meat cache dating back more than 11,000 years, were found when the Colby Mammoth site east of Worland, Wyo., was excavated by a crew under Wyoming State Archaeologist George Frison in the 1970s.