The Ancients - The First South Americans

Episode Date: December 1, 2024

The prehistoric archaeology of South America is fascinating and constantly developing.Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr. Tom Dillehay to discuss how early humans navigated their migration from North to South America, adapting to diverse environments and leaving a rich archaeological record that challenges long-standing theories, including human footprints dating back 10,000 years.Presented by Tristan Hughes. The producer and audio editor is Joseph Knight, the senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music from Epidemic Sounds.The Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and today we're heading to prehistoric South America. A few months back, I received an email from an avid ancients listener called Franco. Now Franco, he suggested that we start looking into the archaeology of South America,

which is often overlooked compared to other areas of the world. We thought that that was a brilliant idea and so today we're bringing some of this fascinating archaeology into the spotlight. We're going back more than 10,000 years. Now you might remember that we recently released an episode all about Ice Age North America and the story of the first people to reach this continent more than 10,000 years ago. That episode with Dr David Meltzer proved incredibly popular and do check it out if you haven't listened to it already after this one. But it also felt like it was only half of the story. We've done the first people in North America, but what has the archaeology revealed about the first people

in South America? How long did it take for humans to go from North to South? Well, joining me to talk through what we know is a man who has been at the forefront of this research for the past 40 years, Dr. Tom Dillehay from Vanderbilt University. Tom has worked and written papers about several key archaeological sites along the Pacific coast of South America, in particular the extraordinary site of Monteverde in Chile. The incredible array of discoveries made there have completely revised what people thought about when the first humans settled in South America, who they were, and how they lived. Tom explains all and much more as we delve into the story of the first

South Americans. Tom, it is wonderful to have you on the podcast today. Well, thank you. I appreciate being here. Now, the populating of South America, the first human settlement in South America. Tom, this feels like a massive topic. I hope you're ready. Now, is this quite an exciting time for the field with new developments and discoveries? Because we've recently done an interview with David Meltzer about the first humans in North America, and he was saying how it's very exciting at the moment with new scientific

research and methods. Is it a similar case with the first South Americans too? Absolutely. You know, the two continents are connected because in South America, specialists see the peopling of the continent coming from North America, obviously, down through Central America, across Panama, into the continent. What's really exciting is not only new discoveries going on up and down the Western Hemisphere, and particularly in recent years in South America and also in the Amazon and along the coastline as well, but also genetics, as my colleague David Meltzer probably talked about, Also, genetics, as my colleague David Meltzer probably talked about, has added a very new and exciting dimension to the discipline related to connections between different kinds of sites and geographic vectors of movement and so forth. in South America is exciting because we have a number of South Americanists themselves from different countries who have been getting their degrees in the US and South American

universities, North America, going back and doing a lot more research on this topic. So everything's coming together and coalescing in a new, exciting movement. A new, exciting movement. So it feels like the perfect time to have got you on the podcast. And I must admit, recently, we also did an interview, an episode on the ancient Amazon. And it's been a pleasure exploring

the Americas thousands of years ago and the archaeology that is coming to light. For the first humans, the populating of South America, Tom, do we have a rich archaeological record for, let's say, more than 10,000 years ago in South America? But the record has increased significantly, and mainly along the Pacific coast and the desert areas of northern Chile and Peru, but also in the high Andes as well. But there's always been a great deal of work for some curious reasons of people looking at the peopling of South America from the viewpoint of southern Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. But also in recent years, largely due to Brazilian and French archaeologists,

a lot more work's been going on in Brazil. And so right at the moment then, is there quite, for the sites so far discovered, just because of the nature of archaeological work so far, Tom, are the majority of the sites then located on that Pacific coast, let's say west of that Andean ridgeline almost? Absolutely. Here we have to talk about what we call archaeological visibility. When you get into the Amazon jungle, you've got a dense forest and preservation of the record is difficult. Organics are not well preserved. Soils have acid that eat the organic material. You've got the dense forest. But when you're working in the open deserts west of the Andean mountains, as you mentioned, archaeological visibility is a lot easier. You can see things.

On the other hand, the sites are often eroded by water and wind, too. So there's some issues there. But a lot of people in archaeology prefer to work along that Pacific coastline. But these gaps across the continent are beginning to be picked up by South Americanists working in their own countries. Forgive my ignorance, Tom, but if someone mentions desert, I might immediately, having grown up in Europe, I might think of, let's say, the Sahara Desert or the Gobi Desert in the Middle East. When talking about deserts in South America, I mean, geographically, do they look quite different to the ones we might imagine in Europe? No, they're probably similar in some ways. First of all, the world's driest deserts,

the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. And that desert extends all the way up to what we call the Altiplano, the high lands in Bolivia that reach up to 14,000 feet in elevation. lands in Bolivia that reach up to 14,000 feet in elevation. That is still desert. But you have the desert also along the entire coast of Peru until you get into the forested and grasslands of the Andes. But also you have kind of a semi-desert once you get into the Patagonian area. It's kind of like a dry step grassland where the visibility archaeologically is easier than would be in the Amazon basin. If we're going, let's say, more than 10,000 years ago, so I'm guessing if, let's say, people are going down that side of the Andes at that time, how different topographically do we think the whole landscape would have looked then? Do we

think back then it would have been inhospitable desert too? I would say the deserts I was just talking about probably would have been grasslands. And since then, things have become drier and less moist. One thing that distinguishes North and South America is that you have these massive glacial ice sheets in the North that kind of prevented movement from, let's say, Yukon, Alaska, down into the lower U.S. 48. But the only place that you had any glaciers that might have prohibited human movement in South America was in the high Andes, central Andes, and down toward Patagonia. So movement was a lot easier across north, south, east, west, diagonally, and so forth. But getting back to your question, the Amazon probably 12, 14, 15,000 years ago is not the

dense green shag carpet we think of today. It was savannas, parklands, open forest here and there. And since the late Pleistocene period, it began to fill in with this dense high canopy forest we think of today. And then the deserts would have been, as I said, grasslands. So no, ecologically, it would have been very different in a lot of different places. Well, let's focus on a couple of sites that seem key. And I know the sites that you've worked on a lot, Tom, done a lot of work on these sites for this whole topic of the peopling of South America. And the first one, I mean, first of all, it struck me with its location because it feels quite far south. I would immediately think that a lot of these sites would be, let's say, near Mexico or Mesoamerica,

but we've got one much further south, Monteverde. Now, what is Monteverde? Monteverdi. Now, what is Monteverdi? Well, Monteverdi is located in northern Patagonia, in what would be the cool temperate rainforest of southern Chile, what they call the Lake District, and the ecological zone that's kind of equivalent perhaps to northern Europe in some ways, bogs and swampy terrain. But Monteverde came to me, I was teaching at the time at the Southern University of Chile in Valdivia, about 400 kilometers farther north. And one day, a student came to the university with a very large, quote, unquote, cow's tooth. It was brought to my attention. And that cow's tooth turned out to be a mastodon gump with their tooth. And at the time, I didn't have too much interest in it.

I said, look, if I ever get down that way further south, I'll take a look at it. And I did. About a year later, I got down there and we found some large ribs and other teeth eroding out of an embankment of a small creek called Chinchihuapi Creek that the local forest people use for bringing out cut timber in the local forest on ox carts, basically. So I began in 1977 excavating at the site, 77 through about 87 in the last century. And fortunately, the site was overlaid by a peat bog, something that certainly in Europe and in England, you guys know about. And it preserved the organic material

underneath where we found pieces of hide, pieces of meat, edible and medicinal plants, worked wood, the bones of different mastodons that have been killed, stone tools, and the remains of what looks like a large tent-like structure that had fallen over the years, obviously, and collapsed. So it was just full of all kinds of things that you normally don't get in late Ice Age Pleistocene sites anywhere in the world. Maybe bones preserved, stone tools, occasionally a fire pit. Tom, it sounds like an archaeological treasure trove. It was only discovered back in the late 1970s with the discovery of this part of this great Ice Age beast, this mastodon. Exactly. There turned out to be remains of seven different mastodons, or what we call

gonfithiers today. And the kill site was probably located outside of what I'm describing, which was the campsite of the people. Well, how far back do we think the human story at Monteverde stretches? Well, what I'm talking about with the preserved organic materials at the site, which kind of shocked the archaeological discipline in the Americas and beyond, dated 14,500 years ago. And that was 1,500 years ahead of the most accepted paradigm or theory of the peopling of the Americas, the Clovis theory. But I'm talking about Monte Berri 2. of the Clovis theory, but I'm talking about Monte Berri 2. There's a Monte Berri 1 located nearby that has very small fire pits, a few convincing stone tools, a few bone remains, but it's not over covered by a peatlands that preserved the site. And that dates at 16 and 18 and 24 and 33,000 years ago. So it's

just scattered little ephemeral pieces of evidence in another part of the site at different depths. And that one, I admit, is unproven. We need to do more archaeological and geological work on what I just described as Monteverdi I. But Monteverdi II, overlaid by that peat layer, is solid evidence. So we'll leave Monteverdi I for another day then and focus in on this amazing archaeology from Monteverdi II. But Tom, if you don't mind, just before we do that, you mentioned the whole Clovis theory before the discovery of Monteverdi. I mean, what was the belief about the peopling of South America, let's say before the 1980s or the 1990s, and how this new discovery kind of starts to change that?

Yeah, if you look at the whole peopling of the Americas, it kind of follows the same pattern in Europe. Back in the late 1800s, a question came up, were humans ever associated with extinct, what we call megafauna? Here in the Americas, it would have been the American horse, giant bison, ground sloth, woolly mammoth, so forth. So the first solid evidence came out in the 30s at the Clovis site here in New Mexico. I'm three hours away from that site where they found several woolly mammoths killed associated with these magnificent lancelet points with a flute in the base of it. And that was the first evidence. And that was Clovis' first theory that the first Americans are these big game

hunters who came over from Siberia or Northeast Asia and rapidly moved throughout the Americas down into South America. And in the early 1940s, the late Junius Byrd of the American Museum of Natural History in New York was working in Southern Patagonia near Tierra del Fuego, and he excavated a cave called Fell's Cave. That cave yielded what's called fishtail points, projectile points. And in the base of it, allegedly kind of a flute-like removal of a flake, something similar to Clovis. And at that time in South America, the evidence was incredibly scarce. So the connection was made between the peopling of the North, peopling of the South. Clovis had moved very rapidly all the way from the North

down to South America in Patagonia at Fell's Cave. And that was the theory that was set for the next 70 years or so. There's always been sites, other sites in North and South America, a few in Mexico as well, that have threatened the Clovis first paradigm or theory, but people debunked them because the proponents of Clovis are strong headed group of people. It was the first theory and we're going to hold on to it. So a lot of these sites were legitimately rejected. The radiocarbon data was questionable, the geological stratigraphy questionable, human artifacts questionable. That goes on to today. archaeological site in the Americas, along with Metacroft Shelter in Pennsylvania, that really threatened the Clovis paradigm. In around 2010 or 11, after some 30 years of excavating, Monte Verde was finally accepted as the site that broke the Clovis barrier, so to speak. Tom, you've had a hell of a battle on your hands there. Wow. Your persistence is incredibly commendable because you

say now accepted and the artifacts that are coming out from that area are extraordinary. So it must feel maybe not even a battle, a war won over those many, many years. Yeah, it was. I mean, it was difficult at times with people, you know, Thomas Kuhn wrote a book called The Structure Scientific Revolution, talking about paradigm change in science. And he says that well-entrenched models and theories like, he doesn't talk about Clovis, but we could say Clovis, takes a long, long time to overthrow those theories with a lot of evidence, a lot of persistence. There's personal attacks involved, people attacking the data.

It took us about 30, 35 years to convince people. And what made it easier for me, well, it wasn't easy, let me say that, was that I was doing other projects too. And so it was kind of like my default projects that kept my mind pretty straight. And I just, the preponderance of evidence eventually atleague at Monteverdi convinced the discipline. But following Kuhn, the paradigm never completely falls until, as he says, the last diehard proponents of the old theory die away. Let's explore Monteverdi now. And before the artifacts, I think it'd be best actually to get an idea of the landscape, not the landscape now, but what

research suggests this landscape looked like some 15,000 years ago that might, well, I'm sure will give us more of an idea as to why this particular area seems to have been so attractive to these early people. Yeah. First of all, back then the site was about 50 kilometers away from the Pacific coast, located in the headwaters of a small stream called Chinchuapi that was, at the time, probably about five meters wide. And it was located in an open forest, what we call a cool temperate rainforest. And what you could see back then, certainly in today from Monte Verde, are three snow-capped volcanoes, all of which are active. So the setting was quite nice, but in that area was boggy terrain, several creeks as well, a pretty well-endowed forest with a lot of resources. The animals would have been the

mastodons we talked about, the American horse, ground sloth, and smaller game as well. But the resources we found at the site and excavated, plant remains, eggshells from birds, and other edibles, come from a radius stretching all the way out to the coast, up into the Andean Mountains, 30 kilometers to the east. So it looks like these people were moving up and down a river that was located about five kilometers away called the Mauyin River, up and down that river that connected the Andean Mountains in the east to the Pacific coast. And in fact, we found 16 different species of edible seaweeds at the site. So it's pretty strong evidence these people were beach converse. You know, they were roaming the beaches and picking up seaweed, much like the indigenous people do today in the area. Those

people are called Wiliche. And exploiting a lot of the wood products too. We had 13 different species of wood. Some were used in this construction, like pole frame of this tent-like structure I mentioned. Others was used for firewood, others for tools and so forth. So just an incredible array of artifacts, well-preserved. You mentioned the tent, first of all, and that really, really intrigues me

for something that's more than 10,000 years old. So can you explain a bit more about that and what that suggests about the nature of the site? Because I'm envisioning right now something like a campsite. Yeah, it is. We found two structures at the site. One was isolated about 30 meters away from this longer tent-like structure. And this was wishbone shaped, where they piled up sand and rock as a foundation and pushed poles into it. And those poles were inclined toward the centerpiece and draped with animal hides. I'm talking about paleolama and mastodon hides. And it collapsed, obviously. So what we found inside that hut was just one item, five masticated cuds full of medicinal plants. So what we think was is probably a medicinal hut. And located 30 meters away was the foundations of timbers, branches of trees laid out kind of a rectangular fashion.

Think of it like an ice tray formation. And they were staked into the ground. There were stakes that the heads were pounded flat and the points that were down into the push into the ground were burned to harden the tips. And in there and amongst that, we found small fire pits. We found edible plants, medicinal plants, chunks of meat from the mastodons that were killed, bone tools, stone tools, and wood tools as well. The kind of trash that you would expect if you were camping somewhere for a long period of time. You see, all of this had collapsed. And what we found in both those structures on the floors were tiny microscopic pieces of hide that was preserved because the structure obviously had collapsed over time. And we estimate in looking at the plant remains that mature during all periods of the year, that people at Monty Bear, the two probably live there at least 10 months, but probably close to one year. I mean, Tom, that was going to be my question. Do we think that it's only occupied for the past of the year, then they're moving elsewhere and kind of almost semi-nomadic? But

it's interesting what you're saying there. That almost seems to be consistent use of Monteverdi, which is staggering and astonishing when learning about these very early people in this area of South America. Yeah. I mean, when you look at the plant remains, we had 73 different edible and medicinal plant remains there, including the seaweeds. And you look at the use of the woods for different functions, firewood, making tools. There's one tree species called maki, and it's very flexible. So when the wind blows, it kind of adapts to the wind and the structure would sway a little bit, probably. The point being, these people had intimate knowledge of that forest in that setting. And that indicates that they were there for a long time before Monte Verde to learn where these resources were and how to use them. And the fact that

a lot of these resources come from the Indian mountains to the east, down toward the coast, and out in a broad radius, probably suggests there were other peoples around, obviously, and they were exchanging products with them. well this actually brings you on to another question because you mentioned earlier how so much of this material has survived in the peat material that wouldn't usually survive so as special as Monteverdi is should we not be thinking of you know oh we found this one site as you say and there mustn't be any other sites in the area it's just perhaps the soil preservation has allowed Monteverdi to survive but we should be imagining and perhaps they haven't survived that nearby there would have been other settlements dating to a similar time, contemporary to Monteverdi too.

That's a very good point. And that is where we're moving toward today. There are other archaeologists beginning to examine and cut banks, peat lenses, and looking for other sites. There is one possible site north of Monte Verde, about 110 kilometers away, called Pilauco, that has preserved animal bones embedded in a peat lens as well. So your point is well taken. There are probably other sites similar to it. The problem is that in the Americas, unlike where you're at and in other parts of Europe, where you're accustomed to what's called wet sites preserved by peat bogs, late sites, early sites, and so forth, here in the Americas, there's only three known wet sites that have ever been excavated,

two in North America and now Monte Verde. So there's not a tradition of looking for these kinds of sites in the field, although the same kind of terrain is there, to search for them. Have there been human remains discovered from Monte Verde alongside faunal remains, alongside stone tools, and so on? No, there have not been. First of all, if these people were there 10, 12 months, what's the likelihood of somebody dying and being buried there? So a lot of these sites are short-term occupation sites. But we did

find three human footprints in the site. Somebody, probably a sub-adult, they're about 11 centimeters long, walked across a patch of clay in the site. And with one of them, it's very clear. You can see the arc impression, the heel and the five toad prints. And the other two are there. So it's right foot, left foot, right foot across a patch of clay. But what you have brought up is a very interesting point. In the Americas, there's probably no more than three legitimate, well-dated human skeleton remains, and not the complete skeleton either, in the entire Western Hemisphere that date before 10,000 years ago. So the problem is this. What's the mortuary pattern of these first Americans? Were they dumping them in bodies of water or things like swamps and bogs, were they cremating the remains

and placing them somewhere else? Were they committing some form of cannibalism, then getting rid of the remains? We do not understand the mortuary patterns of the first Americans. And that creates a problem for the genetic studies studies because the genetic analyses are going to come from, mainly, those human skeletons. It's completely different from the old world where you are, Africa, Australia, Asia, Europe. They have found numerous human skeletons of different time periods, as you well know, not in the Americas. It's very interesting indeed.

Yes, in my mind, it would instantly go. I mean, here in Britain, we have a very rich record, and that has really helped us learn more about that deep prehistory of Britain and indeed in other places. And yes, I guess then we have to focus on the artifacts that you do have at these sites in abundance. In particular, it feels like the one thing we haven't really focused on quite yet at Monteverdi, which is, Tom, the tools. In particular, it feels like the one thing we haven't really focused on quite yet at Monteverdi, which is, Tom, the tools. I mean, what types of tools were these people using? The one thing that always comes to mind with these early sites, stone tools. So we've got lancelet points, projectile points, spear points, as you might want to call them.

We've got stone scrapers, cutting tools, grinding stones for crushing plants, and a wide array of adzes and perforators with stones. And then in the wood area, we have what appear to be digging sticks. We found remains of wild potatoes at Monte Verde, so what people use today are cow ribs or wooden sticks to dig the potatoes out. We found starch grains of potatoes on the edges of some of these wooden sticks. There's also, we found the remains of two wooden lances that had been broken and placed on top of fire pits. Seems to be some kind of decommissioning of the site or ritual. I don't know. The points of them were sharpened and burned to harden them. So there's a wide array of wooden tools and a few bone tools

as well. Some probably used as digging sticks, quote, unquote, and others kind of looked like adzes. They were breaking off the bones of the tusk of the mastodons and using those as well. And then a couple of the molars, large molars of the mastodons, seem to have been used as choppers for chopping material too. They've been crushed in a very different way than we would expect. So there's a wide array of organic and inorganic tools at the site, including the wood that was used to construct these two structures I was talking about, the tents, and also the wooden stakes as well. So it's quite a sophisticated technology. I mean, Tom, I must admit, I'm most fascinated by those wooden

tools and objects that have survived because usually those don't survive. So to imagine also those sticks potentially being used to dig up wild potatoes like a foraging stick, to me, that's even more interesting than the burned areas of the faunal remains because you just don't usually see that. No, you don't. That's why Monteverdi for a long time, beyond the radiocarbon dates of being 1,500 years older than Clovis was controversial. How can you have these kinds of things? We haven't found this before. It was somewhat shocking to the discipline. Now, I want to bring in the link with North America. As mentioned, we've done

an episode recently on humans reaching North America with David Meltzer. And the toolkit of these first North Americans, can you see strong similarities with the toolkits, the artefacts discovered from a place like Monteverdi? Or is there evidence that, maybe theory, that as humans went to South America, that they developed their different styles of tools to suit these other habitats that they were living in?

A very good question. And you're right at the truth. As they went through different ecological zones, adapting to different places at different times with this environment over thousands of years, constantly changing, then they had to adapt their life ways. And that included consumption of different resources and different technologies. But we do see in the scrapers and the adzes and cutting stone tools and the projectile points, some degree of similarity. And also what we find a lot of in South America, and I haven't mentioned

this, are what's called bola stones. These are spheroids that have grooves around them. And they're still used today by some of the indigenous groups in Patagonia. They're used as sling stones, or as kind of bolas that you throw and it wraps around the legs of a bird or a small animal, or stuns them by hitting them and you capture them. These were found at Monte Berri and they found a number of early sites in Patagonia. They're also found at early sites along the Rio Grande in cave sites in Texas and New Mexico. So there are some similarities, yes. We talked about the occupying of this site seemingly for most of the year. How long do

we think Monte Verde was occupied for? How many generations, I mean, roughly how many years do we think Monteverdi is this active place in this area of South America? Well, the site, going back to its geological setting, is on a high portion, the upper end of this creek that's on a high ridge that runs from east to west. So it would be kind of a footpath from the ocean to the Andes. But Monte Verde, too, as I've mentioned before, may be occupied for a year. But if Monte Verde won with these different depths of minute portions of evidence suggesting a human presence off and on for another 10, 12, 15,000 years. There exists the possibility of people there long before Monte Verde II at 14,500 years ago. It's just unproven as yet.

The problem is once you excavate Monte Verde II, it's like going from riches to rags because there we have this paucity of information, you know, in the deeper levels. There are some sites in Brazil and elsewhere in South America that might date 16,000 to 20,000, 22,000 years ago, but they're controversial as well, as is Monte Verde 1, and they still need to be proven. So there's hints out across the continent of people being there earlier, as there are in North America as well. Is there any evidence that people were coming back to that place for thousands of years after that, or has the archaeology not revealed, I mean, kind of later layers almost from that area of the world yet?

At Monte Verde, no. We have no evidence that after 14,500 years ago that people were coming back. So let me quickly insert one thing here. What we found at the site was a very thin layer of ash covering the site, about half a millimeter thickness to a millimeter in thickness in ash, site, about half a millimeter thickness to a millimeter in thickness in ash, probably eruptions from the volcanoes to the east. And I suspect, and I haven't published on this because it's too much speculation, but I'll say it now that perhaps they abandoned the site as a result of volcanic eruptions, as people do today when there are volcanic eruptions. They did not come back to the site, but there probably are other sites in the area where they were visiting other places, as we talked about before. That makes it even more extraordinary.

What a fascinating snapshot this archaeology is revealing about people in this one site, some roughly 14,500 years ago. I guess it's also exciting. You've been working there for so many years, Tom, what archaeologists might discover from that layer in the future? Do you think there's still more out there from Monteverde too, and probably from elsewhere nearby? Well, there is. In fact, I'm going down, I'll be excavating there at Monteverde 1 in March, and there likely are more sites. It just takes more time, more resources. And also, one thing I haven't mentioned is that the team working at Monthly Verity, because of the preservation of so many organic remains, is composed of almost 70 specialists. We've got

insect specialists, geneticists, we've got wood specialists, seaweed specialists, so on and so forth. So to do this kind of work, it requires a big team and a lot of resources. Now, aside from Monteverdi, where else have archaeologists uncovered evidence for humans in south america for more than 10 000 years ago and you know i've got one particular site in mind but if you're happy to mention a few others that's absolutely fine too there's several sites that date around 12 13 000 years ago, up and down the continent, that provide solid evidence. And other sites are rejected or questioned. But one site is on the Pampa, Argentina, grasslands of Argentina, called Arroyo Seco. It dates about 14,000 years ago,

excavated by Gustavo Polites, Argentinian archaeologist. A couple of sites in eastern Brazil hovering around maybe 13,000, 13,500 years ago. There's some sites up north in Colombia and Peru, Ecuador, 13,000, maybe 13,800 years ago. And on the coast of northern Peru in the desert, Huacapieta, where I excavated with a colleague of mine, Duccio Bonavia, Peruvian-Italian. And that dated around 14,500 years ago, maybe a little older. And what it is, is a remnant terrace of the late Pleistocene, nearly 100,000 years ago, that looks like a pitch of two soccer fields that are elevated up some five to six meters and sitting right on the ocean today.

Back then, they would have been about 15 kilometers from the ocean because the sea lanes were down. But we found there shark bones, big sharks, three meters long. I don't know how they killed them or captured them, with large stone flakes that were 7, 8 to 15 centimeters across, used for cutting. Preservation is not as good as Monteverde. We found some seaweed there as well, in addition to collecting marine resources, shellfish and fishing as well. And the environment at that time would have been a grassland, not a desert. Today it's a desert. But between that site and the ocean, there were a number of estuaries and headlets of brackish water. And probably fish and sharks with high tide were coming in. And we

think there is how they're capturing the fish and maybe killing the sharks as well. Even today, in certain areas along the north coast of Peru, there's still people who use that technique. They wait until high tide. Here comes the high tide washing with the fish. They get caught in small sharks too in low areas. So the people go out and club them today with baseball bats and club them, today with baseball bats, and club them to death, take them off and eat them. Wow. Okay. Very different side to Monteverdi. And as you say, so this is in a desert environment, is it? In a desert environment. Back then, it would have been a kind of a dry grassland environment. But those people were mainly exploiting the ocean,

not the terrestrial resources. How interesting. So very different to Monteverdi. I've got in my notes, though, earliest evidence of avocado? Now, is this a red herring, but is this also related to the site? Yeah, well, we found later, not at 14,500, but around 10,800 years ago at Puacapieta, in the later levels, still foragers, maritime foragers, terrestrial foragers. We found evidence of avocado, squash, and chili pepper, all three dating about 10,500 years ago. And probably all three are non-domesticated, wild, okay? So this is indicating, again, same case with monthly burying. We're not just talking about people hunting big game. In this sense, it'd be sharks.

We actually found one whale bone too. Well, it was probably washed up on shore, as happens today. People butchered it and consumed it. Now, that was in the levels of 14,000 years ago. But these people are exploiting a wide range of resources. You know, it's like they have a supermarket out there. They go into it and they're eating anything they can get their hands on. I mean, that is absolutely extraordinary. And I guess sites like this, are they really adding so much colour to the nature of these early communities? The term hunter-gatherers is always thrown about for

pre-farming communities. I mean, how would you define these early communities in South America from archaeological work at places like Huacaprieta and Monteverde? Yeah, you can throw in a number of sites from Colombia, Brazil, again, Argentina and other places. What it is indicating very early on is that these people exploited a very wide variety of not only edible plants and, of course, animals, large and small, but also fishing, shellfish collecting and collecting medicinal plants. I mean, let's face it, they're humans with health problems. collecting medicinal plants. I mean, let's face it, they're humans with health problems.

Out there learning what is in that environment and exploiting it probably effectively and efficiently and adapting, as we talked about before, their technology to these different and differing situations. They're a lot more acute and astute than we think they are. You know, they're just not simple mobile hunters and gatherers on the move. But in working these sites, you gain a real appreciation for the intelligence and intuition of these people. And that reminds me of something that I chatted to David about, and David mentioned, which I think really is worth repeating now, is as those first humans are, let's say, emerging into north america and what is today the united states of america beyond the ice sheets how this brave new world brand new

world new habitats and they're experimenting they're having to find out what plants are edible what aren't and you know that's always going on and i'm guessing that's exactly the same with the great diversity of habitats as those people go down to South America. The amount of trial and error, so to speak, of figuring out what plants you can eat, what you can't, what marine resources are available, what animal resources are available, habitats, that would have taken so much time. And it's another extraordinary part of the story. Oh, absolutely. That's why I say they have intimate knowledge of that environment. And as you say, probably a lot of it was trial and error as well. We found an interesting plant at Monte Verde called Drosetera SP. It's just a scientific name. And it comes from the steppes of Argentina,

the other side of the Andes. And it's very toxic and poisonous. And today, the indigenous people have to masticate it and spit it out, let it dry in the sun, and it can become potentially a medicinal element. But that indicated to me, and it always stuck in my mind, okay, they brought that plant back to Monte Berrily. Did they learn how to use it from groups in Argentina? Did they try to use it? Was somebody sick from it? Did they abandon that plant? And it gets to the very point of trial and error with anything out there in the environment.

And one point I'll make here is I work with the local Mapuche indigenous people. And I talk with the shamans down there who are healers and ritual people and so forth. And the shamans, I asked them the same question. How did you learn about the plants, the edibles and the medicinals? They said, we learned it from the animals. We watch what they eat, and then we tried it out. So we've had a look at Monteverdi and Huaca Prieta and this incredible archaeological material that you have surviving. I'm really glad we got you on the podcast now because it's an exciting time. This is a difficult question, but with the current archaeological material available,

what is our best guess about the nature as to how humans populated South America? Would you think predominantly Pacific Coast? Or what do we think? Good question. I've always thought that there were multiple avenues into South America. First, you have to think about the Panamanian Isthmus. It's very narrow. As you come out of southern Panama, the Darién Forest into Colombia,

that's the bridge into South America. And they could have come along the Pacific Coast. They could have come along the Atlantic Coast or just over land or a mixture of those. You know, the peopling of South America, there's two theories. One, they came along the waterway, the Pacific, but you have to throw in the Atlantic as well,

that side, and by land. So I'm a believer in multiple pathways. It could be any or all of those. Well, it's very exciting, therefore, for the future as more archaeological work is done by yourself and many colleagues, both in North America and absolutely in South America too. I must admit, I knew next to nothing about Monteverdi. I'd never heard of Huaca Prieta before, before looking at your research, Tom. So this has been eye-opening for me. How big a task is it to get this knowledge out into the world about prehistoric South America and the populating of South America?

It's been difficult, not only for me in some ways, but colleagues. I mean, South American colleagues, for their data to be evaluated and eventually accepted, much of it has to be published in English. There's a certain degree of what I call academic imperialism that still operates in the world, where there seems to be this notion of, well, first of all, not a lot of North Americans read Portuguese or Spanish, so they're going to have to read things in English. But I think that it's a discipline that's growing very quickly. It's one of the hot topics in anthropology. And getting this information out, archaeology, as I've hinted at, and as you well know,

is a discipline that requires a lot of interdisciplinary research and a lot of resources. But these sites are not easy to find either. Monty Berthie found me. I didn't find Monty Berthie. It came to me vis-a-vis this student. And a lot of sites are like that. Farmers and fishermen find sites and so forth. But I think there needs to be, and I say that, more systematic

archaeological survey and reconnaissance by archaeologists out across well-defined paleo landscapes. Because when we look out there at that landscape, as you alluded to earlier, we look out there at that landscape, as you alluded to earlier, that is very different in the past 12, 14, 15,000 years or more ago than it is today. And we need to learn that landscape and learn how to research it. But, you know, times are exciting. There's more interdisciplinary data coming into view. Genetics is exciting. New techniques with LiDAR technology. That's penetrating beneath the thick tree cover, isn't it, LiDAR, Tom? Yeah, exactly. And you get a better reading of what the landscape was like in addition to the archaeology. So I encourage young people to go into any discipline that relates to this theme,

or archaeology in general. Well, Tom, that's a lovely way for us to finish this episode. It just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. I enjoyed it a great deal. Thank you. Well, there you go. There was Dr. Tom Dillehay talking through the archaeology surrounding the first evidence for humans in South America and why it's such an exciting area of archaeology right now and really exciting discoveries, no doubt, will be coming out of South America in the years ahead.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Ancients. Please follow this show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. Don't forget, you can also listen to us and all of History Hit's podcasts ad-free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com slash subscribe. That's enough from me and I will see you in the next episode.