|
||||||
PRESS EVENTS | MONTE VERDE | PRESS RELEASE | TEAM | FOOTPRINT | STAKES | MAP DALLAS Human beings migrated to the Americas 1,300 years earlier than previously thought, pushing human habitation of the New World back to some 12,500 years ago, according to a team of eminent archaeologists who verified the antiquity of the Monte Verde archaeological site in Chile. The Chilean site was excavated by a team led by Tom Dillehay of the University of Kentucky and the Universidad Austral de Chile from 1977 to 1985. The site was investigated Jan. 3-13, 1997 by a team of archaeologists sponsored by The Dallas Museum of Natural History, Susan and Claude Albritton, Lamar Norsworthy, the Holly Corporation and the National Geographic Society, which will feature the findings in an upcoming issue of its magazine. The archaeologists reported their unanimous conclusions today in Dallas. Its hard to overstate the importance of the teams consensus, said Alex Barker, Dallas Museum of Natural History curator of archaeology. For 60 years, the Clovis-period entry of humans into the New World has withstood all challenges. Now the Monte Verde site establishes that humans arrived earlier. The Clovis horizon, named after a distinctive fluted projectile point styling, was thought to mark the earliest spread of hunter-gatherers into North America at about 11,200 years ago, coinciding with the opening of an ice-free corridor from Asia to America. Monte Verde, located 500 miles south of Santiago, has human artifacts as well as material never seen at early American sites: remnants of hide-covered huts; a chunk of animal meat, which DNA analyses indicate is mastodon; digging sticks, finely crafted tools of bone and tusk, and more than 700 stone tools; and, a childs footprint. I am fully convinced that both Monte Verde 1 (MV1) and MV2 (MV2 is the layer dating to at least 12,500 years ago; MV1 is a deeper and older layer) are cultural manifestations and push the time limit back further than previously thought, said Dennis Stanford, curator of North American Archaeology, Smithsonian Institution. I suspect well start finding earlier sites coming out of the woodwork. The implications of Monte Verde are profound, said David Meltzer, professor of anthropology at Southern Methodist University. While its only a thousand years older than the previously accepted dates, its location 10,000 miles south of the Bering land bridge route that the first Americans took into the New World implies a fundamentally different history of human colonization of the Americas. George Stuart, National Geographics chief archaeologist and chairman of the Societys Committee for Research and Exploration, said, All of the numerous pre-Clovis sites proposed through the decades have had a shadow over them. The Monte Verde conclusion is as definitive as archaeology gets. The Dallas Museum of Natural History, located in Dallas historic Fair Park, receives a third of a million visitors each year. In addition to the Monte Verde project, museum curators also are currently conducting archaeological projects in Texas and Louisiana, and paleontological projects in Texas, Wyoming and Colorado. In addition to Dillehay and Barker, the team included: - Jim Adovasio, Professor of Anthropology, Mercyhurst College; PRESS EVENTS | MONTE VERDE | PRESS RELEASE | TEAM | FOOTPRINT | STAKES | MAP |