Monte Verde and the Peopling of the Americas: an abandoned potential World Heritage site made joyful with birdsong


I had visited the site of Monte Verde in southern Chile once before, in 2011. On the 7th January 2024, I drove there again (from Puerto Montt) to see what has changed. What I found was not encouraging. A formerly attractive wooden house at the Monte Verde I site is now a decrepit ruin. There are some helpful information boards (kudos to whoever made these), now fading badly and with Monte Verde I and II mislabelled. A rudimentary archaeological theme park nearby appears to be entirely abandoned. This is a sad state of affairs for such an important site.

Despite all the signs of abandonment and neglect, the place is a joy to visit for the vivid music of the varied birdsong. There were southern lapwings, buff-necked ibises, striped woodpeckers, a snipe, grasslands yellow finch, rufous collared sparrows, austral blackbirds, and Chilean swallows. Also, not far from the site is a line of burrowing owl colonies with their alert to dozy, but always utterly charming sentries, a complete delight to see.

The rigorous archaeological work here overturned the long held view that the Americas were first populated by the Clovis Culture about 13000 years ago. 


Cover of the Dillehay volume on Monte Verde


Reviewers' comments indicating the importance of the work

It is the subject of a series of papers and is among the most significant of archaeological sites in the Americas. It is noted on the UNESCO tentative list. Its state of abandonment therefore seems astonishing. The land appears to be under private ownership given the presence of cows wandering freely. Given that Monte Verde is only a half hour drive from Puerto Montt, a grimy and unlovely industrial port city, there would seem to be a fantastic opportunity for the city to elevate its current lowly cultural status by embracing the Monte Verde story. The city of Osorno has given an idea as to how this might be done, with the establishment of the Parque Pleistocénico de Osorno and Museo del Pleistoceno de Osorno, complete with gomphothere models, inspired by the work of Mario Pino and colleagues at the Pilauco Bajo site.


The Monte Verde site in its larger context, 60 km scale at lower left. The river to the west is the Maullin and the marine bay to the east is the Seno de Reloncavi. Eight of the nearby volcanoes are labelled.


Maps showing context and shoreline at about 15000 years ago, from Dillehay et al. (2008)




A pair of buff-necked ibises, also known as bandurrias, wandering the site.

A striped woodpecker at Monte Verde.



Charming burrowing owls not far from Monte Verde.


Aerial view of the Chinchihuapi Creek and archaeological sites.





References


Dillehay et al. 2008. Monte Verde: Seaweed, Food, Medicine, and the Peopling of South America. Science, 320, 784-786.

Pino, M. et al. 2013. The late Pleistocene Pilauco site, Osorno, south-central Chile. Quaternary International, 299, 3-12



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stone axes from the highlands of Papua New Guinea

Image
The story of first contact in 1933 with the peoples of the central Wahgi Valley in the Papuan highlands is a remarkable one. An unsuspected group of thriving stone-age cultures came to the attention of the outside world when the Leahy brothers first flew over the area and later reached it on foot. Tribal men carried elaborate stone axes and this contact with extant stone-age cultures provided fascinating insights on how their stone tools, such as axes and adzes were hafted. The available evidence was collated in Burton's (1984) Thesis at the Australia National University, on "AXE MAKERS OF THE WAHGI: Pre-colonial industrialists of the Papua New Guinea highlands." I saw a number of these old axes during a visit to the highlands near Mount Hagen in October 2018 (see the Paiya chief photograph below). The area of that journey is shown in the google Earth image shown below. The upper Wahgi River valley with locations of Paiya Village, Mount Giluwe and Mount Hagen t...
Read more

A Merovingian Croix Ancrée Tremissis, Sutton Hoo, and Declining Gold Content in the 7th Century Coinage

Image
In the recent Netflix film "The Dig" there is a scene in which Basil Brown's character shows a small gold coin, known as a tremissis, to Edith Pretty, confirming that the ship burial at Sutton Hoo is of Anglo Saxon age as he had previously suspected. A Merovingian tremissis found in Kent, 10 mm across 37 such coins, all from Merovingian Francia, were found at Sutton Hoo, associated with the remains of an elaborate purse. These coins have commanded a great deal of attention as a potential means to constrain the date of the burial. This is a highly imprecise process (the coins are not datable to within a range shorter than 16 years), relying on recognising issues associated with known rulers, identifying the youngest of these, speculating from there as to how much younger the undated coins may be, and then how much later the assembled group was deposited in the ship burial. The absence of locally minted coins in the group (the earliest were the East Anglian "trophy...
Read more

Horseshoe Crabs Past and Present: a NW Borneo Journey

Image
Horseshoe crabs figured strongly in my week. Last Saturday (April 1st 2017), I spoke with Kevin Laurie, a Hong Kong-based expert on horseshoe crab behaviour and conservation. He mentioned the existence of a wall decorated with horseshoe crabs in Kampung Ayer, the water village of Bandar, Brunei, in northwest Borneo. Armed with this tip, I visited Kampung Ayer on the evening of the following Thursday (April 6th), guided by two very knowledgeable locals, Wann and Mark Putera Delima. Kampung Ayer is an interesting place in itself, with Antonio Pigafetta describing the place as he found it when the surviving Victoria and Trinidad of Ferdinand Magellan's fleet visited in July 1521 (shortly after Magellan's death in the Philippines). His description of "Burne" was as follows: " that city is entirely built in salt water, except the houses of the king and certain chiefs. It contains twenty-five thousand hearths. The houses are all constructed of wood and built up fr...
Read more