By the late 1990s, scholars generally agreed that humans had arrived in North and South America by at least 11,000 BC, about 1,500 years before the appearance of Clovis culture.
Notes on verification
Corroborated by science journalism and archaeology sources referencing Monte Verde and pre-Clovis research, but framed as a historiographical claim about scholarly consensus timing in the late 1990s, which is harder to verify precisely than the underlying archaeological dating itself. [cascade flags: aggregator_dropped_primary_exists | tier=unverified indep_score=0.3 clusters=2 claim_tier=notable] [rescored 2026-09-15: curated origin-host map (PR #65); unclassified hosts no longer scored as aggregators]
Sources
- Paleo-Indians - Students | Britannica Kids | Homework Help (seed:history_and_archaeology)
- https://www.sciencenews.org/article/first-people-south-america-clovis (corroboration)
- https://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/clovis/rose1.html (corroboration)