Monte_Verde

Monte Verde After long, often bitter debate, archeologists have finally come to a consensus that humans reached southern Chile 12,500 years ago. The date is more than 1,000 years before the previous benchmark for human habitation in the Americas, 11,200-year-old stone spear points first discovered in the 1930s near Clovis, N.M. The Chilean site, known as Monte Verde, is on the sandy banks of a creek in wooded hills near the Pacific Ocean. Even former skeptics have joined in agreeing that its antiquity is now firmly established and that the bone and stone tools and other materials found there definitely mark the presence of a hunting-and-gathering people. The new consensus regarding Monte Verde, described in interviews last week and formally announced Monday, thus represents the first major shift in more than 60 years in the confirmed chronology of human prehistory in what would much later be called, from the European perspective, the New World. For American archeologists it is a liberating experience not unlike aviation's breaking of the sound barrier; they have broken the Clovis barrier. Even moving back the date by as little as 1,300 years, archeologists said, would have profound implications on theories about when people first reached America, presumably people, monte, archeologists, verde, years, dr, said, university, ago, site, first, human, south, pre-clovis, new, made, ice, even, about, way, southern, research, points, last, evidence, early, dillehay, corridor, before, been, americas, american, america, two, tools, support