A New Chronology for South American Colonization

About this episode

The episode discusses new findings in South American colonization through geological studies at Monte Verde II.

Send us Fan Mail For nearly thirty years, a peat bog in southern Chile was the anchor of American prehistory. Monte Verde II told us humans were in the Americas 14,500 years ago — shattering the Clovis First paradigm and launching a new era of migration science. Then a new team came back, not to find more artifacts, but to read the geology. A 2026 paper by Todd Surivel and colleagues in Science deploys volcanic ash forensics and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating to argue that the...

Topics covered

• archaeology
• migration science
• prehistoric America
• geology
• volcanic ash
• optically stimulated luminescence

Keywords

• South America
• colonization
• peat bog
• Clovis First paradigm
• migration
• volcanic ash
• OSL dating

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Science

Books & works: Monte Verde II

Places: Chile

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