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Paleo-Indians is a term that refers to the earliest known human inhabitants of the Americas who lived from about 13,500 to 8,000 years ago. The earliest Paleo-Indian culture is known as Clovis, after a site near the town of Clovis, New Mexico, where remains of this prehistoric culture were found. Other Paleo-Indian cultures followed, and some may have existed alongside the Clovis culture. Prehistorians disagree about when the first people migrated to the Americas. Some archaeologists believe that people arrived well before the Clovis people. Experts refer to such early Native American cultures as pre-Clovis and do not consider them Paleo-Indians.

Paleo-Indians lived during the last part of the ice ages of the Pleistocene Epoch and the beginning of the current time, the Holocene Epoch. During the Pleistocene, they hunted now-extinct giant animals, called megafauna, that included mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths, relatives of modern camels, and giant bison. Hunters launched stone-tipped spears using a device called an atlatl («AHT laht uhl» ), a shaft with a spur at one end to hold the butt of the spear. This device increased the range and force of their spears. Paleo-Indians also hunted smaller animals, including various reptiles, birds, and fish, and gathered wild plants. These peoples lived in small, highly mobile groups with no permanent settlements.

Paleo-Indian cultures gradually faded by about 8,000 years ago, during what archaeologists call the Archaic Period. The Archaic Period was characterized by increasing dependence on plant resources and a wider variety of other resources. The transition was also marked by a change in hunting technology. Most Paleo-Indian hunters manufactured spear points that lacked notches for hafting (fixing to a shaft). Later Archaic hunters in most parts of the Americas made spear points with distinct corner or side notches.

See also Folsom point; Indian, American (The first Americans).