Monte Verde Archaeological Site

How and when the Americas were settled is still clouded in mystery. For a long time research believed the clovis culture around 11.000 BCE to be the first evidence of a human settlement on the continents. It was also assumed that the migration was purely land based via the Bering Strait. The Bering Strait at the time connected Asia to the Americas by land due to lower sea levels.

Findings at Monte Verde (and additional sites) proved that the Americas were settled earlier (at least 12.000 BCE). Monte Verde also cast a shadow of doubt on the land based migration. It’s really far south and the locals seem to have used algae as resource, so a current research hypothesis is that the migration was coast based, possibly with boats.

Additional questions and controversies with Monte Verde are if the settlement took place even earlier (30.000 BCE) and if the settlers crossed the Pacific by boat instead via the Bering Strait. This is Monte Verde’s claim to fame in a nutshell. Respectively the little I learnt while visiting and researching for this post.

A fun piece of trivia is how the site was discovered. A university student in Valdivia who originated from the Monte Verde area brought bones found to class. He believed them to be cow bones. Instead these were the remains of a mastodon.

OUV

As is the case with most prehistoric sites, there isn’t all that much to see. It’s a pretty green …