Beingindigenous | Magazine

MONTE VERDE
One of the oldest Archaeological Site in the Americas

For decades, scientists thought the first Americans were skillful hunters that came from Asia some 11,200 years ago.

Monte Verde, located in southern Chile, changed this long-accepted paradigm. Tom Dillehay and his team worked at this archaeological site, showing that the first Americans arrived at least 12,500 years ago.

The Monte Verde Excavations

From 1977, Tom Dillehay (University of Kentucky) excavated at Monte Verde, some 50 km inland from the Pacific of southern Chile. The water-saturated deposits of the site, on Chinchihuapi Creek, afforded excellent preservation of organic remains in what was interpreted as a habitation surface, used by 20 to 30 people. Radiocarbon dates from the level averaged ~12,500 years ago. Among the features recorded by the excavators were two large and many small hearths and 12 huts about 3 by 3.5 m.

Tools found at the site
Most of the stone tools found at the site were made of local raw material and consist of cobbles with a few flakes removed to make simple but functional working edges. Worked wood, from logs to branches, was also found. Bones, ivory, and possible tissue from mastodons were found along with remains of Pleistocene llamas, small mammals, fish, and mollusks. Remains of plants that could be from coastal to Andean to arid grassland habitats were recovered. The imprint of a human foot in clay is among the most intriguing finds from the site. Upstream, limited excavation uncovered another deposit, with some possible stone tools and three possible hearths dated to ~33,000 years old.

Monte Verde
At 12,500, Monte Verde was earlier than any other site in North or South America by a full millennium. Moreover, it was nowhere near the Bering Strait, the place where most scholars assumed that people entered the Americas from Asia. That implied an even earlier arrival, after all it meant that people had to pass through the ice-free corridor and travel some 7,500 miles (12,000 km) south. Needless to say, the Clovis-first crowd didn't initially give in. In fact, the archaeological benediction of the site came only in 1997. That year many of the foremost Paleoindian specialists traveled first to Kentucky, to hear presentations by Dillehay and his team members and to view many of the artifacts, then to Valdivia, Chile, for further presentations and review of additonal, and finally to Monte Verde itself. Later that year, the consensus was in and published in the journal American Antiquity.

With Monte Verde generally accepted, the Clovis-first orthodoxy was overthrown and discussion on how and when the Americas were colonized became wide open.

Source:
http://www.cabrillo.edu/~crsmith/mverde.html