Monte Alban, Chile Redated? So, In this case Pre-Clovis Sceptics Maybe had a Point?

An early dating of the site at Monte Verde in southern Chile took a bit of time to be accepted, as the evidence found in excavations 1979-onwards was seen as ambiguous for so long. In particular, the items that were presented by the excavator Tom Dillehay as artefacts made by human hands were not accepted as such by everyboidy who saw them, they were rather difficult to unequivocally diagnose. In the end, in the 1990s, the excavator managed to persuade critical colleagues that there was early occupation of this site that was evidence for an Ice Age pre-Clovis human presence in this part of the Americas, dated at roughly 14,500 years old.

New research is however shaking the foundations of this dating. It now looks as if a recent geoarchaeological study has produced data once again challenging these conclusions 

A study [...] in Science (which has a related Perspective) aims to shatter that bedrock. It suggests the stratigraphic layers at Monte Verde are scrambled, with older wood and other organic material mixed into younger sediments, resulting in misleading radiocarbon dates. The site is just 8200 to 4200 years old, the study concludes. 

That means the site might actually date to the Holocene.  That actually would tie in better with the typology of the stone tools found on (other parts of) the original site. The new study was led by Todd Surovell, an archaeologist at the University of Wyoming working with Claudio Latorre, a paleoecologist at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, whose team found when the examined the evidence from their fieldwork carried out in 2023 that:

" Flooding has since destroyed the site of the original excavation near Chinchihuapi Creek, so Surovell and Latorre’s team examined several places along the creek’s banks where they could see layers of sediments that had been deposited over the course of the landscape’s history. They took samples of wood and other organic material for radiocarbon dating, as well as minerals that can be tested to determine when they were last exposed to sunlight. They concluded that 14,500 years ago, the area was a forest. Later, sediment from a wetland settled over the wood and other debris from the forest floor, followed by volcanic ash from an eruption 11,000 years ago. Then, Chinchihuapi Creek formed, cutting into the landscape and carrying some of the older wood and other organic material into the river channel. Some 8600 years ago, gravel and sand started to fill in part of the creek, sealing the 14,500-year-old organic material inside much younger sediments. The original Monte Verde dates, obtained from that older organic material “are actually good,” Latorre says. "

The results of the 2023 work are already being questioned, and it is unfortunate that the original site was no longer available for excamination and establishing the continuity of contexts across the whole investigated area. 

What is interesting in this particular context of this blog is that the so-called "Clovis-First" debate (a local spat in just a narrow field of the archaology of a distant country the other side of an ocean) is represented as typical of the allegedly dogmatic behaviour of archaeologists worldwide. The casus of the alleged mistreatment of Tom Dillehay is displayed as "what happens to ANY archaeologist who dares to put forward a new idea" in the discipline.  Let us see what happens to this staple of the Pseudo-archaeologists' mantra-narrative as the discussion over Dillehay's site progresses. 

References
University of Wyoming (edited by Sadie Harley), ' Monte Verde fieldwork resets age of famous South American archaeological site' March 19, 2026.

Lizzie Wade, 'Debate explodes over age of key South American archaeological site ' Science 19 Mar 2026.

John Bartlett, 'Archaeological site in Chile upends theory of how humans populated the Americas … again' Guardian Thu 19 Mar 2026.

video interview:  David Ian Howe 'The Peopling of the Americas never made sense until now'. YouTube Mar 19, 2026 (the story of how the project came about is really interesting and thought-provoking and will ring a bell with anyone who's ever worked on sites on floodplains of braided river sediments: here onwards - but you might want to see the 'seaweed' bit before it too). 

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Magic Used in Pyramid Construction?

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Ancient Amazonian Sites in Jeopardy

In the southwestern Amazon, one archeologist is fighting to protect ancient sites from Brazil’s seemingly unstoppable agribusiness industry, now worth $524 billion. The carvings are proof of an ancient and sophisticated civilization that aligned its agricultural calendar with summer and winter solstices. Farmers view the land as a cash cow, and the area’s historic geometric earthworks are in the way.

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Posted on YouTube by Bloomberg Originals Sep 25, 2024

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Why Pseudoarchaeology Isn’t “Just Another View”

A British trainspotter calling himself "Sir Nigel Gresley" (@JLBKL) [a name pinched from railway history] joins the discussion about the relationship between pseudoarchaeology and professional archaeologists and urges archaeologists to treat pseudoarchaeologists better. In doing so he claims that arcaheologists allegedly forget that "evidence is interpreted and an opinion is formed which is fine but the opinion is not fact".

Treating the two manners of approaching the evidence for the past as equivalents however somewhat glosses over a crucial distinction.

Properly conducted academic archaeology is not merely one "opinion" among equals but a rigorous, evidence-based discipline that demands systematic data collection, contextual analysis, peer review, falsifiability, and the integration of vast bodies of reinforcing evidence rather than isolated anomalies.

In contrast, amateur pseudo-archaeology frequently begins with preconceived conclusions--often sensational ones-—and then cherry-picks superficial similarities ("it looks like"), ignores contradictory data, bypasses contextual scrutiny, and sidesteps the methodological safeguards that prevent confirmation bias from turning speculation into purported fact.

The difference is not just stylistic or temperamental; genuine archaeology builds cumulative, testable knowledge through disciplined inquiry, whereas pseudo-archaeology often misrepresents the record to fit a narrative, which can mislead the public and undermine efforts to uncover what actually happened. Civility is essential, but so is intellectual honesty about what constitutes reliable method versus wishful interpretation.



Gresley @JLBKL added (Mar 19 2026 10:47 AM):

[...] The situation to me is very clear. We fund universities and they fund Archaeology. Graham Hancock points to an earlier civilisation about which we know very little. An archaeologist (whose name I did not make a note of) said that he is working of what he thinks was (sic). A message and a warning which is why it was deliberately buried 12,000 years ago.

So I say IF he is right AND they knew then how to predict a global catastrophe THEN I would like that to be researched more thoroughly and funded properly.

The other proposition of simply looking for evidence that looks to confirm the established paradigm has no real importance compared to finding out something that may save lives.

So let's cut out the abuse and simply concentrate on diverting the funds, both public and private, away from the current focus and onto much more useful research.

The argument presented rests on redirecting public and private funds away from “the established paradigm” in archaeology toward investigating Graham Hancock’s hypothesis of an advanced civilisation ~12,000 years ago, destroyed by a global catastrophe, whose builders allegedly left a deliberate “message and warning” at sites such as Göbekli Tepe. This is said to be more important than current research because it “may save lives”.


this proposition ignores that after several decades of Hancock raising this issue, there is in fact stiil no credible evidence for his alleged lost Allerød Antecedent Advanced Civilisation or its apocalyptic end (nor the Spanning [Seven Sages] Civilization that would be needed to transfer its knowledge to later cultures around seven millennia later). Decades of global fieldwork, seabed mapping, ice-core records, and genetic studies have found no trace of the metallurgy, writing systems, monumental architecture, or agricultural products, let alone surpluses, that an advanced global society would leave.

The Tas Tepeler sites in SE Anatolia (such as Göbekli Tepe, maybe c. 9600–8200 BCE) built by pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers are remarkable, but show continuity with later Neolithic developments, not a technological leap from a vanished supercivilisation. Disasters preserve rather than erase evidence (Pompeii, the Storegga Slide, Laacher See). The absence of any signature of Hancock’s civilisation is not explained by “it all washed away”; it is explained by the civilisation never having existed. Hancock’s thesis, popularised in best-selling books and a Netflix series, functions as entertainment that profits from speculation while dismissing the peer-reviewed record. That is why professional archaeologists describe it as pseudoscience.

The “message and a warning” supposedly buried deliberately 12,000 years ago for future generations has no basis in the archaeological literature. At one stage it was claimed that one site, Göbekli Tepe, was intentionally backfilled, but even then the lead excavator, Klaus Schmidt, stated the reason remained unknown and probably marked the ritual closure of a part of a site of a “very strange culture”. Any infilling could have been practical or ceremonial, not prophetic. The “warning to us” narrative circulates only on YouTube, Facebook, and alternative-history forums; no peer-reviewed paper attributes the backfill to a deliberate time-capsule for 21st-century humanity. Past ritual cannot be turned into future prophecy without evidence.

The trainspotter ignores the fact that there is zero firm evidence that these ancients actually “knew how to predict a global catastrophe” - like a comet strike, a volcano or whatever. No ancient society left records of scientific forecasting of ice-age endings, sea-level rise, or cosmic impacts using instruments or mathematics beyond what the archaeological record shows. Prediction requires repeatable, testable methods; myths record, they do not forecast with the precision needed to “save lives” today.

Also I find frustrating the repeated surfacing of the Hancock-originating stereotype based on a few examples of anecdote that all all archaeology worldwide merely works only to confirm an “established paradigm” and therefore has “no real importance”. Funding is awarded competitively on the basis of testable hypotheses, not dogma. The notion that the entire global discipline (from Chinese state archaeology to university digs in Peru) is a closed shop ignoring big questions is a rhetorical device, not a description of practice.

Sustained misrepresentation of this type does explain professional frustration with pseudoarchaeologists. When commentators who have conducted no fieldwork, read no primary literature or excavation reports, have a totally inadequate grasp of the cut-and-thrust of moder theory and methodology, people who have engaged only with the cheap and loaded rhetoric of commercial books accuse an entire discipline of conspiracy or laziness, the response is predictable. Archaeologists spend years in trenches, labs, and peer review; they publish open data and debate fiercely among themselves. To be told their life’s work is worthless “paradigm confirmation” while a Netflix theory is elevated as urgent public safety research feels like deliberate abuse. That does justify pushback when basic facts are ignored.

Research priorities are not decided by popular YouTube votes or personal hunches; public money requires evidence, falsifiability, and expert evaluation. Diverting funds to untestable “IF he is right” scenarios would violate the very principles that produced reliable knowledge about sites like Göbekli Tepe in the first place. Real threats such as climate change, pandemics, industrial pollution are already researched with rigorous methods, public warnings are issued by academics, reports are published, evidence displayed transparently, and then politicians for decades ignore and deny the validity of these warnings. Every time. We may get a ban on the use of a particular type of plastic bag or drinking straws, or the shape of plastic bottle tops is chaged, but in general the scientists can say what they say until they are blue in the face but we march on into self-destruction.

In short, the proposal fails on every factual count: funding continues, no lost civilisation exists, the quest for truth is best served by evidence, not by rebranding book-selling speculation as life-saving research.

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QUEST For Ancient Civilizations

Apparently the last 'Sedona' event was not as repetetive enough of the same old tired tropes to prevent the organizers trying to host another one... 

Sedona, Arizona May 1–3, 2026.

Quest for Ancient Civilizations is a three-day gathering of researchers, explorers, and curious people investigating the deeper story of humanity's past.
The ancient world is full of stuff that doesn't add up. How were the stones at Puma Punku cut with that kind of precision? Why do more than 400 cultures have a flood story? How is Göbekli Tepe 12,000 years old and more sophisticated than structures built 7,000 years after it? These are genuinely good questions, and they deserve a space where they're taken seriously, not dismissed, but not oversold either. Just explored, honestly, with good people. There are researchers who've spent decades investigating this, in the field, at the sites, with the evidence in their hands. And there are a lot of people who've been following their work, watching the videos, reading the books, and carrying this curiosity mostly in private because there isn't always a great place to talk about it. Quest puts those people in the same room.

The Pre-Babel Age and the Vedas

"This is Dr Irving Finkel, a renowned Assyriologist at the British Museum. He suggests writing may have existed thousands of years earlier than we’re taught. "

Walter Cruttenden (@WalterCrut)(* 2/2/26
It may be true, but if the pre-Babel age was really an age of telepathy and clairvoyance (as suggested by the Vedic saints and sages) then writing which formally starts about 3100BC may be a devolution rather than an evolution of consciousness. You only need to spell things out for people when they don’t already know. Still in an age of telepathy some symbols may have been helpful to some people.

Oh gosh. While the speculative notion of a "Golden Age" of telepathy is a poetic narrative, it relies on an unfalsifiable premise. Where is the evidence of this? To suggest that writing represents a "devolution" of consciousness is in my view a misinterpretation. In reality, the transition from oral or hypothetical "intuitive" cultures to literate ones was not a retreat from power, but a massive cognitive expansion. Writing served as the first "external hard drive," allowing for the storage of complex data—astronomical cycles, legal codes, and mathematics—that far exceeded the capacity of any single biological brain or even orally transmitted (and transmutable) mythological cycle. It looks a bit like Cruttenden has been influenced by the Hamlet's Mill crowd (cf Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechen 2015).
Furthermore, treating the Vedic Siddhis or the Tower of Babel as literal historical markers is a category error. These traditions function as profound spiritual metaphors or allegories for linguistic diversity, not as chronological records of a lost psychic baseline.

By framing literacy as a symptom of ignorance, the American author overlooks its true function: temporal transcendence. Writing did not emerge because we "forgot" how to communicate; it emerged because we finally had something to say to the future. Duh.

And no, a few symbols scratched on a stone do not equal writing, except perhaps to the same extent as a three-year old's drawing of blobs with a smile and two vertical lines below (symbolising in their opinion [my/a] granddad) is a pictograph of the word.

* self describes as "Author entrepreneur focused on precession and cycles of consciousness. Rancho Mirage", CA" (USA). BinaryResearchInstitute.org. Author of "Lost Star of Myth and Time" (2005) and "The Great Year" (2003).

More "Lies" About Ancient Ruins (Which are not what they seem to be)

 

NewsNation "journalist" Ross Coulthart says he went into the woods and found a portal to another dimension that's being guarded by the US military.

He, of course, provides no evidence of this.pic.twitter.com/JJmIfQHDv0

— Steven Greenstreet 🐷 (@MiddleOfMayhem) March 1, 2026