Monte Verde, << MOHN tay VAIR day, >> site is a prehistoric site in southern Chile that provides evidence that human beings inhabited the Americas before the Ice Age ended about 11,500 years ago. Using radiocarbon dating techniques, scientists determined that the site was inhabited by human beings at least 14,000 years ago. Archaeologists think the site may have been a camp used by people who lived by hunting, fishing, and gathering plants. The age of the site has forced scientists to reconsider earlier theories about how and when people first migrated to North and South America.
Beginning in the late 1970’s, archaeologists excavated the remains of past human activities at Monte Verde along the banks of a small creek. They uncovered the remains of several simple shelters and tools made of wood and stone. They also found items that are rarely preserved, including parts of plants, remnants of prepared animal skins, fragments of rope, and the flesh and bones of prehistoric animals. These items were preserved because the site lies in a wetland where water and low levels of oxygen hindered the decay of plant and animal matter. In one area of the site, archaeologists discovered preserved human coprolites and footprints.
Most scientists previously had believed that the first human beings to travel to the Americas migrated from Asia about 13,500 years ago. Many archaeologists thought that the first people to arrive, often identified with the Clovis culture, were able to cross a shelf of land across the Bering Sea during low sea levels toward the end of the Ice Age. The Clovis culture is named after a site in New Mexico where distinctive stone spear points were first discovered in the 1930’s. Many archaeologists believed that the descendants of the Clovis people then spread throughout the Americas.
The age and location of the Monte Verde site have led most archaeologists to believe that human beings migrated to the Americas long before the development of the Clovis culture. However, they do not know exactly when or how these human beings arrived.
See also Indigenous peoples of the Americas (The First Americans); Paleo-Indians.
