Debate explodes over age of key South American archæological site

An archæological site that overturned the history of humans in South America might just do it again. Radiocarbon dating pegged artefacts from Monte Verde, in southern Chile, at 14,500 years old — suggesting that people arrived along the continent’s coast, before the ‘Clovis people’ travelled through an ice-free corridor in North America. Not so, says a new study: those artefacts were mis-dated and originated no more than 8,200 years ago.