Monte Verde
A waterlogged Chilean site long held as pre-Clovis proof — and now the subject of a sharp dispute.
- When
- Known to
- ± 500 years
- Era
- Late Pleistocene, Quaternary
Monte Verde in southern Chile preserved wooden stakes, hide fragments, plant remains and hearths in a peat bog, and its acceptance in 1997 as a 14,500-year-old site broke the Clovis-first orthodoxy. In 2026 a re-dating study argued the deposits are mid-Holocene, between 8,200 and 4,200 years old. Other researchers rejected the work sharply, one calling it egregiously poor geological work. The site's status is genuinely unsettled, though the broader pre-Clovis case no longer rests on it alone.