FLORENCE, Texas – FlorenceTexas is the heart of a new film premiering at the Austin Film Festival this weekend. It takes place at the Gault School of Archaeological Research.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this place is that, at first glance, it is quite unremarkable.

A stream divides the site which is both half forest and half open. Now it is bordered by quarries and farms, but take a closer look and first there is a clear reminder of the people here.

Even during the FOX 7 interview, school board member Tim Brown was throwing rocks left and right. Each of them had been carved, probably by humans thousands of years ago.

“Oh yeah, you can’t leave here without seeing something like that,” Brown said. “This is probably the richest and best-defined Clovis site in the Americas.”

The Clovis people roamed this land about 13,000 years ago. Their presence today is set in stone.

“Blades, scrapers, all kinds of little tools they made out of durable material,” Brown said.

Fast forward to the 21st century and this site has almost been lost.

“The owner chose to monetize the site,” Brown said. “It allowed people to pay a fee and come and dig, and it was completely unregulated.”

Enter the main character of this story: Dr. Michael Collins.

“Without Mike, we wouldn’t be standing here,” Brown said.

Dr. Collins’ story caught the attention of film director Olive Talley.

“Michael Collins has overcome one challenge after another,” Talley said. “Everything from the weather to the money to the financing to the control of the property. He ended up buying the property after five years of trying to find public financing.”

And thank God he did.

What was under everyone’s feet all along would rewrite the history books.

“This produced very strong and compelling evidence of human presence much earlier than what we refer to as the Clovis culture, which we thought was the first,” Brown said.

Collins found evidence that people were here long before the Clovis people.

Instead, one group probably called central Texas home up to 20,000 years ago.

“And to think that we have a place in Central Texas that is so central to the population narrative of America right here in our own backyard,” Talley said.

That’s what Olive Talley’s new film is about.

It’s called “The Stones Are Speaking.”

If we are quiet enough, they have a lesson to share.

“I hope the film is a call to action and a call to awareness, not just about the Gault site, but about the general awareness that cultural sites are important to preserve,” Talley said.

The film premieres at the Austin Film Festival on Saturday, October 26.

Talley is still hoping to land a deal on a streaming platform for home viewers.