I was sure the Clovis First theory was right for years, but newer evidence changed my mind

For the longest time, I thought the Clovis First idea was settled science. I remember reading about it in my college archaeology 101 class back in 2015 and it just made sense to me. But then I started following the digs at the Monte Verde site in Chile and the Meadowcroft site in Pennsylvania. Those places kept showing solid evidence of human occupation way before 13,000 years ago, like 14,500 to 18,000 years ago. At first I figured the dating methods were off or it was just a fluke. But after seeing multiple peer-reviewed studies and hearing a talk from a researcher at Texas A&M last spring, I had to admit the evidence was just too strong. What specific pre-Clovis site do you think is the most convincing?

2 comments

2 Comments

noahclark6d ago

Oh great, another thing my college textbooks lied to me about. Monte Verde really is the smoking gun though, I remember seeing a documentary where they pulled up those stone tools from way deeper than they should have been if Clovis was first. Makes you wonder what other "settled science" is just waiting for someone to dig a little deeper and mess it all up. What do you think finally pushed you over the edge on this?

seth_carr6d ago

Monte Verde was the big one for me too, but the real clincher was reading the actual excavation reports from the Pedra Furada site in Brazil. Honestly, if you're on the fence, just pull up the original field notes on those sites instead of the textbook summaries - the dates and layers don't lie, but the interpretation takes a while to catch up.