Monte Verde

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Monte Verde is an archaeological site in south-central Chile, which is suspected to date 12,500 years before present, making it one of the earliest inhabited sites in the Americas. Monte Verde pre-dates the earliest known Clovis culture site of Clovis, New Mexico, by 1000 years. This find challenges the generally accepted "Clovis" theory that states that people did not begin to colonize the Americas until after 11,500 years before present.

Mario Pino, a Chilean geologist from Universidad Austral de Chile and Tom Dillehay started excavating Monte Verde in 1977. The site is situated on the banks of Chinchihuapi Creek, a tributary of the Maullín River located 36 miles from the Pacific Ocean. One of the rare open-air prehistoric sites found so far in the Americas, Monte Verde was preserved as the waters of the Creek rose a short time after the site was occupied and the peat-filled bog that resulted inhibited the bacterial decay of organic material and preserved many perishable artifacts and other items for millennia.

According to Dillehay and his team, the site was occupied around 12,000 – 11,800 B.C. by about twenty to thirty people. A twenty-foot-long tent-like structure of wood and animal hides was erected on the banks of the Creek and was framed with logs and planks staked in the ground, making walls of poles covered with animal hides. Using ropes made of local reeds, the hides were tied to the poles creating separate living quarters within the main structure. Outside the tent-like structure, two large hearths had been built for community usage, most probably for tool making and craftwork.

Each of the living quarters had a brazier pit lined with clay. Around those hearths, many stone tools and remnants of spilled seeds, nuts, and berries were found. Remains of forty-five different edible plant species were found within the site, over a fifth of them originating from up to 150 miles away. This suggested that the people of Monte Verde either had trade routes or traveled reguarly in this extended network.

Other important finds from this site include human coprolites, a footprint, assumed to have been made by a child, stone tools, and cordage. The date for this site was obtained by Dr. Dillehay with the use of radiocarbon dating of charcoal and bone found within the site.