A landmark archaeological site in Chile may be thousands of years younger than originally thought, a new study claims. If validated, the finding would upend a key piece of evidence that humans reached South America about 14,500 years ago and force a rethink of how and when the Americas were first settled.
The site, called Monte Verde, has long underpinned claims that people were living in South America more than 1,000 years before the Clovis culture, which is dated to around 13,000 years ago. But the new analysis, published March 19 in Science, suggests people lived at Monte Verde only 4,200 to 8,200 years ago.