A team of archaeologists is questioning the 14,500-year-old date for Monte Verde in Chile, one of the oldest human occupations in the Americas, and is proposing a much younger age for the central Paleo-Indian site. The researchers suggest their new date challenges the current narrative about how early the Americas were settled, but other experts are unconvinced, calling it “extremely poor geological work.”
The Monte Verde 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, edible plant remains, hearths and natural rope. Radiocarbon dates placed the site’s occupation level, called Monte Verde II or MV-II, around 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 the Page-Ladson sites in Florida. But MV-II remains unusual because it is the only one securely dated 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 Surovellan archaeologist at the University of Wyoming, reassessed the age and formation of MV-II. They concluded that Monte Verde was most likely occupied in the mid-Holocene, around 4,200 to 8,200 years ago.
“The so-called 14,500-year-old archaeological component that was supposed 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 LiveScience.com. “In other words, it’s not an Ice Age site.”
Surovell and study co-author Claudio Latorrea paleoecologist at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, visited Monte Verde in 2023 and collected samples of soil and organic matter 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 of new samples of charcoal and wood from the Monte Verde area produced dates from 13,400 years to 16,500 years ago, in line with previous studies. But because the site is on the banks of a stream with complex geology, Surovell and colleagues suggested that these older dated materials were actually redeployed at a much younger site, making MV-II appear older than it is.
The key to the rescue, Surovell said, is a layer of ash known as Lepué Tephrawhich covered the area after a volcanic eruption 11,000 years ago. The researchers discovered this tephra – ejected volcanic material – in several geological sections along the stream and concluded that erosion at some point cut a channel through the site. So while MV-II is lower in the ground than the surrounding terraces, it was actually set on top of the tephra layer, making it younger than 11,000 years.
Archaeologists question the geological analysis
But Tom Dillehayan archaeologist at Vanderbilt University who has spent 50 years studying Monte Verde disagrees with the researchers’ conclusions.
“There is no 11,000-year-old ash layer beneath the Monte Verde II site,” Dillehay told LiveScience in an email. “They study a different context in the area and project it onto the site from other places.”
The volcanic tephra layer is interesting new information, Michael Watersa geoarchaeologist at Texas A&M University who was not part of the study told LiveScience. But the study includes “extremely poor geological work,” he said. For example, the authors say that one of the terraces formed partly from erosion and partly from deposition, but Waters said this is geologically impossible.
“There are so many things that should be done 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 that. This study really falls short in demonstrating that Monte Verde II is mid-Holocene.”
“Even if the authors are right — and I’m extremely skeptical — it won’t change the overall narrative about the people of America.”
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 previously skeptical of the early date visited the site and concluded that it was no reason to question the integrity of dating.
David Meltzeran archaeologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas who led that 1997 expedition said that while he appreciates alternative perspectives on archaeological sites, there are several problems with the new study.
“Their work was not actually in situ, but instead in small sections that are tens to hundreds of meters away,” Meltzer told LiveScience in an email. If the stream is active and complicated, as the researchers suggest, “the other sections they sampled may have little bearing on what was at the site itself.”
Don’t rewrite textbooks yet
In addition to the methodological flaws in the study, archaeologists have taken issue with the Surovells statement that “with the colonization of the Americas no longer anchored by Monte Verde, our revised chronology supports a more recent date for human arrival in the Americas.”
“It is a sign of a good, healthy discipline when something that is settled science is questioned,” Kenneth Federan archaeologist and author of “Native America: The Story of the First Peoples” (Princeton University Press, 2025), told LiveScience. But regardless of the date of Monte Verde, “it really does not in any way negate the likely scenario that people had to come in along the coast first to get them into North America before the ice-free corridor ever opened.”
Meltzer agreed, pointing out that archaeological sites elsewhere support the interpretation of Monte Verde as a very early human occupation site.
“Monte Verde is hardly the only site in the Americas that predates Clovis,” Meltzer said. “Even if the authors are right — and I’m extremely skeptical — it won’t change the overall narrative of the people of America.”
Surovell is not so sure. In a study from 2022 published in the journal PLOS Onehe and his co-authors argued that pre-Clovis sites such as Friedkin, Gault, and Coopers Ferry (in Idaho) are characterized by “drift” of artifacts and organic material from upper layers, potentially making these sites appear older than they actually are.
“It speaks to the need for more of this kind of replication (of dating) to be done,” Surovell told LiveScience, “especially at these sites that seem to be outliers, like White sand 22,000 years ago. It is a very strange thing. Where did these people come from? A possible explanation is that the site has been misinterpreted.”
But Dillehay said Surovell and co-authors have a clear agenda: to bring back “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 flaws present in the study,” Dillehay said.
“We came to a different conclusion,” Surovell said. “Not to say ours was right. I certainly welcome anyone to try to replicate what we’ve done.”
Surovell, T.A., Méndez, C., García, J.-L., Lüthgens, C., Thompson, J.M., Latorre, C. (2026). A mid-Holocene age for Monte Verde challenges the timeline of human colonization of South America. Science. https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.adw9217
