Monte Verde: The Chilean Site That Rewrote American Prehistory

Monte Verde is an archaeological site in southern Chile where people built a small settlement about 14,500 years ago. Excavated by the American archaeologist Tom Dillehay from 1977, it became the first site older than the Clovis culture of North America to be widely accepted by archaeologists. Its acceptance in 1997 overturned the long-held Clovis-first model and forced a complete rethink of when and how humans reached the Americas.

Discovery

Monte Verde lies on the banks of Chinchihuapi Creek, a small tributary of the Maullín River, in the Los Lagos Region inland from Puerto Montt. In the mid-1970s local people widening a cart track along the creek cut into its banks and exposed large bones. They were later identified as belonging to a gomphothere, an extinct relative of elephants.

The bones came to the attention of researchers at the Universidad Austral de Chile in Valdivia, where Tom Dillehay was then teaching. In 1977 he began excavations at the site with a team that grew to include specialists from many disciplines, among them the Chilean geologist Mario Pino. Fieldwork continued until the mid-1980s.

An extraordinary state of preservation

What made Monte Verde exceptional was its preservation. Soon after the settlement was abandoned, the creek area became a bog, and a layer of peat formed over the remains. The waterlogged, oxygen-poor conditions preserved wood, plant fibres, seeds, fruits and even fragments of animal tissue, materials that almost never survive at sites of this age.

As a result, archaeologists could study not just stone tools but a whole way of life. The site preserved wooden stakes and timbers, knotted plant fibres, hearths, and remains of food and medicine. Dillehay later reported the impression of a child’s footprint in clay.

The Ice Age landscape

When people lived at Monte Verde, the last Ice Age was drawing to a close. Glaciers still covered much of the southern Andes, and the great ice sheets of Patagonia had only recently begun to retreat. The area around the creek was a cool, damp landscape of forest, marsh and open ground, rich in plants and fresh water.

Large animals such as gomphotheres and extinct horses still lived in the region, alongside smaller game. Within a few thousand years many of these large species had disappeared across the Americas, part of the wider Quaternary megafauna extinction. At Monte Verde, people seem to have used gomphothere meat, bone and hide, though whether they hunted the animals or scavenged carcasses is not certain.

The settlement

The main occupation, known as Monte Verde II, contained the remains of a long structure about 20 metres in length, made of a wooden frame of logs and planks. It appears to have been divided into a series of small rooms or huts, perhaps a dozen, and covered with animal hides. Hearths lay inside and outside the structure.

A short distance away was a separate, wishbone-shaped structure built on a foundation of sand and gravel. Bones, stone tools and medicinal plants were concentrated there, and Dillehay interpreted it as a place for butchering, tool-making and perhaps healing. The settlement may have housed some 20 to 30 people and was probably occupied for a year or more, possibly in more than one season.

What the people ate and used

The inhabitants used a remarkable variety of resources. Plant remains include wild potatoes, berries, nuts, rushes and many medicinal plants, some still used by local Mapuche communities. Animal remains include gomphotheres and other species.

In 2008 Dillehay and colleagues reported nine species of seaweed and marine algae from the site, dated to about 14,200 to 14,000 years ago. Some came from beaches tens of kilometres away. The finds suggest that the people of Monte Verde had regular access to the Pacific shore, either through travel or exchange, and they lent support to the idea that the first Americans moved south along the coast.

The tools included pebbles and simple flaked stones, some carefully shaped bifaces, and wooden implements. Some stone items, such as spherical stones that may have been used as sling stones or bolas, had been carried from elsewhere.

Dating the site

Radiocarbon dates on wood, bone and other materials placed Monte Verde II at about 12,500 radiocarbon years ago. Calibrated to calendar years, this corresponds to roughly 14,500 years ago, with some studies favouring about 14,800. That made it more than a thousand years older than the earliest well-dated Clovis culture sites, even though Monte Verde lies near the southern end of the Americas, very far from the Bering Land Bridge.

A deeper, separate layer, Monte Verde I, contained a few possible stone tools and burned areas dated to around 33,000 years ago. Dillehay has been careful not to claim it as proof of human presence, and most archaeologists set it aside. In 2015 Dillehay and colleagues reported possible evidence of human activity at nearby locations between about 19,000 and 14,500 years ago, but this too remains under discussion.

The 1997 site visit and the Clovis-first debate

At the time Monte Verde was excavated, most North American archaeologists held that the Clovis people, dated to about 13,000 years ago, were the first Americans. Earlier claims had repeatedly failed close scrutiny, and many specialists were sceptical of Monte Verde too.

Dillehay published his results in two large volumes, in 1989 and 1997. In January 1997, a group of leading archaeologists, including former sceptics such as C. Vance Haynes, travelled to Chile to examine the collections and visit the site. They issued a joint statement that Monte Verde was a genuine human site predating Clovis, published in the journal American Antiquity later that year.

The verdict was widely reported as the end of the Clovis-first model. Not everyone was convinced: in 1999 the archaeologist Stuart Fiedel published a detailed critique questioning the documentation of artefacts and their positions, and Haynes later expressed renewed doubts. Dillehay and his colleagues responded to these criticisms, and today most specialists accept Monte Verde II as a valid pre-Clovis site.

Legacy

Monte Verde opened the way for the acceptance of other pre-Clovis sites in North America, such as Paisley Caves in Oregon and the Debra L. Friedkin site in Texas. It showed that the first Americans were not only big-game hunters but people who exploited plants, coastal resources and many kinds of animals. It is now a central part of the story of the peopling of the Americas. The site has protected status as a national monument of Chile.

Timeline

• c. 33,000 years ago: Possible but disputed traces in the deeper Monte Verde I layer.
• c. 14,800–14,500 years ago: The Monte Verde II settlement is occupied.
• c. 14,200–14,000 years ago: Seaweed from the coast is brought to the site.
• Mid-1970s: Local people find gomphothere bones in the creek bank.
• 1977: Tom Dillehay begins excavations.
• 1989: The first volume of the Monte Verde report is published.
• 1997, January: A panel of archaeologists visits and endorses the site as pre-Clovis.
• 1997: The second volume of the report is published.
• 2008: A study in Science reports seaweed and marine algae from the site.

Why it matters

Monte Verde changed the story of the Americas. By proving that people lived in southern Chile around 14,500 years ago, it showed that the first migrants had arrived earlier than almost anyone had believed, and it encouraged researchers to look for older sites and new routes, especially along the Pacific coast.