Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

For decades, a theory based on the dating of organic matter (sampled from the Monte Verde archaeological site in Chile) dated the oldest American settlement to 14,500 years ago.

Researchers reevaluated those findings, and discovered that this sample matter was actually older organic matter which had been redeposited later.

Clovis, New Mexico, was long considered the oldest known human settlement in the Americas, although some evidence has been found for earlier sites.

For some time, it was thought that the first humans to populate the Americas may have appeared as early as 14,500 years ago. Experts believe they would have followed a migration route that took them southward, trekking along the Pacific Coast, to what is now the archaeological site of Monte Verde, Chile. The idea that they arrived before the Clovis people, however—arrived in North America between 13,000 and 13,500 years ago after crossing the Beringia land bridge—was questionable to some, and after a reevaluation of discoveries from between the 1970s and 1990s, the truth has finally been unearthed.

Monte Verde is certainly ancient, but as it turns out, evidence of human occupation at the site is not quite as ancient as it was once believed to be. Anthropologist Todd Surovell (from the University of Wyoming) and his team of researchers have found that the site was only occupied between 4,200 and 8,200 years ago.

South America was the last continent on Earth to be colonized by humans. Artifacts from these early settlers—including stone artifacts, ropes, wooden tools, bundles of seaweed, and the remnants of early architecture—were recovered from a peat bed in the Monte Verde II region of the Monte Verde site, which was excavated between 1977 and 1985.

Dating indicated that the site was occupied 1,500 years before the Clovis people ever made it to the North American continent. In fact, the settlement was determined to be even older than a site in eastern Beringia from which the Paleoindians were thought to have entered the Americas, and this determination was validated in 1997. But Surovell was not convinced.

“[Our] results fail to support the [previous] hypothesis that the lower portion of [Monte Verde II] date to the Late Pleistocene,” he and his team said in a study recently published in the journal Science. “Instead, evidence from multiple sections show that the uppermost terrace at Monte Verde accumulated during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene.”

According to the researchers, several critical observations had been missed. For one, Monte Verde II is actually above an older layer known as Lepué Tephra, which is comprised of rock fragments that were ejected by an erupting volcano. And that lower (and, therefore, presumably older) layer is only 11,000 years old—nowhere close to the original 14,500-year-old estimate for Monte Verde occupation. For another, the original investigation of the site never accounted for the erosion that further separates older and younger strata in the region.

There is also a significant presence of Pleistocene wood and organic matter near Monte Verde II, which is about the same age as wood at the site itself. Because of geological disruptions in the region during Early Holocene, organic matter dating back to the Pleistocene was exposed, redeposited, and buried in river sediments that Surovell dated to the Middle Holocene. This natural phenomenon convinced previous archaeological teams that the settlement at Monte Verde II was far older than it actually was, even leading some to reject the theory of human migration over the Beringia land bridge. The age of the sediments can only mean that whatever remained of the Monte Verde settlement was from the Middle Holocene, rather than the Pleistocene. While this does not necessarily rule out human presence in the Americas before the Clovis culture, there has not yet been sufficient evidence to confirm that anyone predated them.

“As demonstrated here, the age of the [Monte Verde II] component should not be used as a constraint or check on colonization models derived from other sources, including the genetics of modern or ancient populations,” said Surovell. “Our findings also underscore the critical need for independent study and verification of early sites.”

You Might Also Like

20 Cars That Were Massively Improved by a Redesign

Going on Vacation? These Appliances Need to Be Unplugged Before You Leave the House

Roborock Reigns Supreme for Robot Vacuums, but We Also Loved These Other Models