Monte Verde, Genetic Evidence, and the Peopling of the Americas

The claim that the Monte Verde site is no more than 8200 years old [Surovell, T. A., C. Méndez, J.-L. García, C. Lüthgens, J. M. Thompson, and C. Latorre. 2026. “A Mid-Holocene Age for Monte Verde Challenges the Timeline of Human Colonization of South America.” Science 391 (6791): 1283–1288] is flawed in several ways, not least in offering a model of fluvial redeposition to explain the site’s deposits without having examined those deposits directly or shown that the original stratigraphic descriptions and chronological evidence are wrong, or that their model even applies to the stratigraphic exposures they themselves described. Surovell et al. (2026) draw from their claim several far-reaching implications about the peopling of the Americas and the genetic evidence bearing on that process. However, those implications too are flawed and must be addressed properly.