Monte Verde, one of the earliest Indigenous sites in South America, is much younger than thought, study claims. But others call it ‘egregiously poor geological work.’
A team of archaeologists questions the 14,500-year-old dating of Chile’s Monte Verde, one of the oldest human occupations in the Americas, and proposes a much younger age for the key Paleo-Indian site. Researchers suggest their new date challenges the current narrative of how the Americas were colonized, but other experts are not convinced and call it “extremely poor geological work.”
THE Mont-Vert The archaeological site is located in the mountains of southern Chile. Discovered in 1976, the site yielded stone tools, preserved wood, bones and skins of extinct animals, a human footprint, remains of edible plants, hearths and natural ropes. Radiocarbon dating made it possible to locate the level of occupation of the site, called Mont-Vert II or MV-II, approximately 14,500 years ago.
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Since the discovery of Monte Verde, archaeologists have identified many other sites that predate the Clovis migration by more than a thousand years, including Paisley Caves in Oregon, White Sands in New Mexico, the Friedkin and Gault sites in Texas, and Page-Ladson in Florida. But MV-II remains unusual because it is the only reliably dated document. Late Pleistocene archaeological site in South America.
In a study published Thursday March 19 in the journal Sciencean international group of researchers led by Todd Surovellarchaeologist at the University of Wyoming, re-evaluated the age and formation of MV-II. They concluded that Mont Vert was most likely occupied during the Middle Holocene, approximately 4,200 to 8,200 years ago.
“The so-called 14,500-year-old archaeological component, believed to forever change our understanding of the colonization of the Americas, actually comes from a landform that is at best 8,000 years old,” Surovell told Live Science. “In other words, this is not an ice age site.”
Surovell and co-author of the study Claudio Latorrepaleoecologist at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, traveled to Monte Verde in 2023 and collected soil and organic matter samples from areas near the MV-II occupational site, which was destroyed more than three decades ago by logging activities and flooding. The researchers radiocarbon dating new samples of charcoal and wood from the Monte Verde region produced dates ranging from 13,400 years to 16,500 years ago, consistent with previous studies. But because the site is located on the banks of a creek with complex geology, Surovell and his colleagues suggested that these older materials had actually been redeposited at a much younger site, making MV-II appear older than it is.
The key to the redating, Surovell said, is a layer of ash known as Lepué Tephrawhich covered the region after a volcanic eruption 11,000 years ago. Researchers found this tephra – ejected volcanic material – in several geological sections along the stream and concluded that at some point erosion had carved a channel through the site. So although MV-II is lower in the ground than the surrounding terraces, it actually sat above the tephra layer, making it younger than 11,000 years.
Archaeologists question geological analysis
But Tom Dillehayarchaeologist at Vanderbilt University who has spent 50 years studying Mont Vert, disagrees with the researchers’ conclusions.
“There is no 11,000-year-old ash layer beneath the Monte Verde II site,” Dillehay said in an email to Live Science. “They study a different context in the region and project it onto the site from elsewhere.”
The volcanic tephra layer constitutes interesting new information, Michael Watersa geoarchaeologist at Texas A&M University who was not part of the study, told Live Science. But the study includes “extremely poor geological work,” he said. For example, the authors claim that one of the site’s terraces formed partly from erosion and partly from deposition, but Waters said this was geologically impossible.
“There are so many things to do if you’re evaluating an archaeological site,” including micromorphology, wood identification, chemical analysis of bones and examination of paleosols (old soil layers) and cryptotephras (invisible layers of volcanic ash), Waters said. “They didn’t bother to do it. This study really fails to demonstrate that Monte Verde II is Middle Holocene.”
“Even if the authors are right – and I am extremely skeptical – this will not change the overall narrative of the peopling of the Americas.”
David Meltzer, archaeologist at Southern Methodist University
Monte Verde entered archeology textbooks as a clear example of a pre-Clovis site in the late 1990s, after archaeologists who had previously been skeptical of the early date visited the site and concluded that there was no reason to question the integrity of the dating.
David Meltzeran archaeologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas who led that expedition in 1997, said that while he appreciates alternative perspectives on archaeological sites, the new study poses several problems.
“Their work was not actually on site, but rather in small sections tens to several hundred meters apart,” Meltzer told Live Science in an email. If the stream is active and complex, as the researchers suggest, “then the other sections sampled might have little impact on what was at the site itself.”
Don’t rewrite the manuals yet
In addition to the study’s methodological errors, archaeologists have challenged Surovell’s hypothesis. statement that “with colonization of the Americas no longer anchored by Monte Verde, our revised chronology supports a more recent date of human arrival in the Americas.”
“It is the sign of good and healthy discipline when something that is established science is called into question,” Kenneth Federarchaeologist and author of “Native America: the history of the first peoples” (Princeton University Press, 2025), told Live Science. But whatever the date of Monte Verde, “it in no way negates the likely scenario that people had to go along the coast first to be able to enter North America before the ice-free corridor opened.”
Meltzer agreed and pointed out that archaeological sites elsewhere support the interpretation of Monte Verde as a site of very early human occupation.
“Monte Verde is not the only site in the Americas that predates Clovis,” Meltzer said. “Even if the authors are right – and I am extremely skeptical – this will not change the overall narrative of the peopling of the Americas.”
Surovell isn’t so sure. In a 2022 study published in the journal PLOS Onehe and his co-authors argued that pre-Clovis sites like Friedkin, Gault, and Coopers Ferry (in Idaho) are marked by “downward drift” of artifacts and organic material from upper layers, which could make these sites appear older than they actually are.
“This demonstrates the need to increase this type of replication [of dating] to do,” Surovell told Live Science, “especially at those sites that appear to be outliers, like White Sands 22,000 years ago. It’s a very strange thing. Where did these people come from? A possible explanation is that this site has been misinterpreted. »
But Dillehay said Surovell and his co-authors had a clear agenda: bring back the “Clovis First theory,” which states that the first Americans arrived through an ice-free corridor about 13,000 years ago.
“The scientific team behind the Monte Verde Project is currently preparing a detailed scientific response that will systematically address the methodological, empirical and contextual errors present in the study,” Dillehay said.
“We came to a different conclusion,” Surovell said. “That doesn’t mean we were right. I absolutely appreciate someone trying to replicate what we did.”
Surovell, TA, Méndez, C., García, J.-L., Lüthgens, C., Thompson, JM, Latorre, C. (2026). A mid-Holocene age for Monte Verde calls into question the timeline of human colonization of South America. Science. https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.adw9217
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