A new independent study led by archaeologist Todd Surovell argues that Chile’s Monte Verde site is far younger than long believed, proposing an age between roughly 4,200 and 8,600 years instead of about 14,500 years, according to The Guardian. The team says this could reshape debates over when and how the first people entered the Americas. They suggest it could bolster the plausibility of an interior ice-free corridor over a coastal route. The researchers conclude that earlier dates were skewed by Ice Age wood and other materials redeposited by erosional and depositional processes along the Chinchihuapi Creek, rather than originating from human occupation layers. By reinterpreting the site’s geology, they argue the landscape on which notable finds rest did not exist 14,500 years ago and formed after about 8,600 years ago.

The study reports identifying a region-wide volcanic ash fall dated to about 11,000 years ago. It places that ash beneath the cultural deposits at the site. Because the ash predates signs of human activity, the team infers that occupation could only have occurred afterward, with the most likely window estimated between about 6,000 and 8,000 years ago.

If this re-evaluation prevails, it would markedly diminish Monte Verde’s role in establishing an early human timeline for the continent. It would remove a major pillar for the coastal migration hypothesis and would lend weight to an interior migration through an ice-free corridor.

Monte Verde, discovered in the 1970s in southern Chile, helped unsettle the once-dominant “Clovis-first” model. That model placed the earliest well-documented humans in the Americas around 13,100 to 12,700 years ago and tied their spread to a migration from Asia across the Bering land bridge roughly 13,400 to 12,800 years ago. The previously accepted 14,500-year age at Monte Verde implied people were in South America before or around the time Clovis technology spread in North America.

The site became emblematic because of unusual preservation. Finds included edible plant remains, natural ropes, animal meat, and the skins of extinct animals. They were found alongside stone tools, wooden implements, hearths, animal bones, footprints, and building features.

Pushback to the reassessment has been swift. Original researchers and the Monte Verde Foundation argue the new dates are ambiguous and do not match what has been excavated. They say the study team sampled around the site rather than the core archaeological layers, overlooked key artifacts, and lacked experience in humid environments. Other critics question whether the ash layer truly blankets the landscape as proposed and whether samples from surrounding areas are comparable to the site’s cultural deposits.

The authors of the new paper counter that the highest terraces formed up to about 11,000 years ago with a volcanic ash layer from the Lepué eruption and that subsequent erosion produced the lower terraces where the main occupation sits, narrowing the plausible age range for human activity, according to La Tercera. They describe a multi-pronged analysis of wood fragments, alluvial sediments, and volcanic ash. They place an approximately 11,000-year-old ash layer beneath the cultural deposits.