This Discovery at Obsidian Cliff in Yellowstone Is Leaving Experts Without Explanation

Hidden within Yellowstone National Park is one of the most important prehistoric sources of volcanic glass in North America: Obsidian Cliff.

For more than 11,000 years, Indigenous peoples used obsidian from this remarkable geological formation to produce tools and projectile points. But archaeologists eventually discovered something extraordinary — material originating from the Yellowstone region had traveled astonishing distances across North America.
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Around 2,000 years ago, obsidian appeared in archaeological contexts associated with the Hopewell tradition in Ohio, more than 2,000 kilometers from Yellowstone. Through geochemical sourcing, researchers can compare the chemical composition of ancient artifacts with known geological sources, effectively giving obsidian a geological fingerprint.

In this video, we explore the archaeology of Obsidian Cliff, the science used to trace ancient obsidian, the remarkable connection between Yellowstone and the Hopewell world, and the unanswered question of exactly how this material traveled such an enormous distance.