Human Saga

Pre-Clovis America: Monte Verde and the Pacific coastal route

c. 16,000–14,500 years ago·Exploration & colonisation·Americas (Chile and Pacific Northwest)·
c. 16,000–14,500 years agoDate
Exploration & colonisationCategory
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Date
c. 16,000–14,500 years ago
Category
Exploration & colonisation
Region
Americas (Chile and Pacific Northwest)
Era
Prehistory
Significance

A cluster of well-documented sites overturned the long-dominant 'Clovis-first' theory and showed that people had spread across the Americas before the Clovis culture.

At Monte Verde in southern Chile, a waterlogged peat bog preserved wooden structures, hearths, knotted cordage, plant remains, and stone tools dated to around 14,500 years ago — a site so far south that humans must have entered the continent considerably earlier. In 1997 a panel of specialists accepted its antiquity, triggering a paradigm shift. Far to the north, Cooper's Ferry in Idaho yielded unfluted stemmed points and dates of roughly 16,000–15,300 years ago, predating the opening of the inland ice-free corridor. Because an interior route was still blocked by ice, these early dates support a Pacific coastal migration — a 'kelp highway' along the shoreline rich in marine resources. The resemblance of Cooper's Ferry points to those of Upper Palaeolithic Japan hints at trans-Pacific cultural links in the founding populations of the New World.

See the world map in c. 16,000–14,500 years ago →More exploration & colonisationThe Prehistory era

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Further reading

The wider story

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Charles C. Mann

Best-selling reappraisal of the sophisticated societies of the pre-Columbian Americas.

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