NEW YORK (AP) — For decades, the strongest evidence for the earliest human settlement in the Americas came from a site in Chile called Monte Verde.

Scientists found echoes of human presence dating back to around 14,500 years ago, including footprints, wooden tools, foundations for a building and the remains of an ancient fire pit. They dated sediments and artifacts from the site to this time frame.

A new study challenges the age of this important site, suggesting Monte Verde might be much younger than scientists thought. But not everyone agrees with the findings.

Scientists sampled and dated sediments from nine areas along the Chinchihuapi Creek by the site and analyzed how the landscape changed over thousands of years. They uncovered a layer of volcanic ash from an eruption dating back to about 11,000 years ago.

Anything above that layer — in this case, the Monte Verde wood and artifacts — had to be younger, according to study co-author Claudio Latorre.

“We basically reinterpreted the geology of the site. And we came to the conclusion that the Monte Verde site cannot be older than 8,200 years before present,” said Latorre, who works at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.

The researchers think changes to the landscape, including a stream wearing down the rocks, may have mixed old layers with new, causing researchers to date ancient wood as part of the Monte Verde site.

The findings were published Thursday in the journal Science. Several scientists, including those involved with the original excavations, take issue with the results.

“They have provided, at best, a working hypothesis that is not supported by the data they presented,” said Michael Waters of Texas A&M University, who had no role in either study.

Experts not involved with the research say the study includes analysis of samples from the area surrounding Monte Verde, where the geology isn’t comparable to the site itself. And they say there’s not enough evidence that the layer of volcanic ash once covered the entire landscape.

They also say the study doesn’t offer a sufficient explanation for the artifacts found at the site that have been directly dated to 14,500 years ago, including a mastodon tusk fashioned into a tool, a wooden lance and a digging stick with a burned tip.

“This interpretation disregards a vast body of well-dated cultural evidence,” archaeologist Tom Dillehay of Vanderbilt University, who led the site’s first excavation, said in an email.

The new study’s authors disagree with these criticisms, saying they sampled within, upstream and downstream of the site. And there’s not enough evidence that the dated artifacts at the site really are that old, said co-author Todd Surovell, of the University of Wyoming.

The Monte Verde site is critical to scientists’ understanding of how people got to the Americas. Scientists used to think the first arrivals were a group of people 13,000 years ago who made tipped stone tools known as Clovis points. The discovery and dating of Monte Verde, which was initially mired in controversy, appeared to put that to rest.

It’s unclear how a new date for the site might affect the human story. Since Monte Verde, researchers have uncovered sites in North America that predate the Clovis people, such as Cooper’s Ferry in Idaho and the Debra L. Friedkin site in Texas.

But another big question is how, exactly, people got to the Americas from Asia, maneuvering south of two massive ice sheets covering Canada. Did humans arrive in time for the sheets to part, revealing an ice-free corridor? Did they travel along the coast in boats, or over a mix of water and land?

A revised date for Monte Verde could reopen discussions about the most likely route by early humans, said Surovell. Future independent analyses of other early human sites could provide more clarity.

“Given enough time and given the ability to do science, science is self-corrective,” Surovell said. “It eventually reaches the truth.”

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

A retired U.S. general predicted that “neither Israel nor the U.S. will fully succeed in replacing the Iranian regime.” 

Former Lt. Gen. Mark Schwartz was quoted by the Israel Hayom newspaper as making the remark. The joint U.S. and Israeli missions against Iran, named Operation Epic Fury and Operation Roaring Lion, are in their 20th day Thursday.

“In my professional assessment, neither Israel nor the U.S. will fully succeed in replacing the Iranian regime. The main reason is that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of Iranian religious leaders who can replace the Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah, if he is eliminated,” Schwartz told Israel Hayom. 

“No matter how many successors you kill one after another, there will always be another one in line. Iran’s intelligence and security apparatus, the Revolutionary Guards, and the Iranian military also have depth. They are capable of replacing the top of the organization if it is destroyed,” he reportedly added. 

IRAN’S SUPREME LEADER MOJTABA KHAMENEI ‘MISFUNCTIONING,’ NOT CONTROLLING REGIME: SOURCES 

Schwartz is a career Green Beret who served in the U.S. Army for 33 years, according to The National Special Forces Green Beret Memorial, where he is the chairman of the advisory board.  

The organization said, “During his career, Mark served throughout the Middle East, Europe, and North Africa,” and, “He has had the opportunity to lead strategic planning and operations working with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the United Nations, the European Union, and the United States Agency for International Development.” 

PENTAGON SEEKS AT LEAST $200 BILLION FROM CONGRESS FOR IRAN WAR 

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had warned Wednesday that if the Iranian regime survives Operation Epic Fury, “it will likely seek to begin a yearslong effort to rebuild its military, missiles and UAV forces.”   

Gabbard also said the intelligence community “assesses that Operation Epic Fury is advancing fundamental change in the region that began with Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023, and continued with the 12-day war last year, resulting in weakening Iran and its proxies.”   

The campaign so far has resulted in the killing of former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has been replaced by his son, Mojtaba Khamenei. 

CEO Saad al-Kaabi says QatarEnergy may have to declare force majeure on long-term contracts for up to five years.

Iranian ⁠attacks on Qatar have wiped out ⁠17 percent of its liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity, causing an estimated $20bn in lost annual revenue and threatening supplies to Europe and ⁠Asia, QatarEnergy’s CEO says.

Saad al-Kaabi told the Reuters news agency on Thursday that two of Qatar’s 14 LNG trains, the equipment used to liquefy natural gas, and one of its two gas-to-liquids facilities were damaged in Iranian strikes this week.

The repairs will sideline 12.8 million tonnes of LNG production per year for three to five years, he said.

“I never in my wildest dreams would have thought that Qatar would be – Qatar and the region – in such an attack, especially from a ‌brotherly Muslim country in the month of Ramadan, attacking us in this way,” al-Kaabi said in an interview.

His comments came hours after Iran on Wednesday launched a series of attacks on oil and gas facilities across the Gulf region after the Israeli military bombed its South Pars offshore gasfield.

Tehran has been firing missiles and drones across the Middle East in response to the United States-Israeli war on Iran, which began on February 28.

It also has essentially blocked the Strait of Hormuz, a critical Gulf waterway through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil and LNG supplies transit, fuelling soaring petrol prices and global concerns about rising inflation.

Iran’s attacks on energy infrastructure have heightened tensions with its Arab Gulf neighbours, who have condemned the strikes as a violation of international law.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Thursday that his country would show “ZERO restraint” if its infrastructure is struck again as the Israeli attack on the South Pars gasfield continued to spur condemnation.

“Our response to Israel’s attack on our infrastructure employed FRACTION of our power. The ONLY reason for restraint was respect for requested de-escalation,” Araghchi wrote on X.

“Any end to this war must address damage to our civilian sites.”

‘Stay away from oil and gas facilities’

During Thursday’s interview with Reuters, al-Kaabi said QatarEnergy may have to declare force majeure on long-term contracts for up to five years for LNG supplies bound for Italy, Belgium, South ⁠Korea and China due to the two damaged trains.

“I mean, these are long-term contracts that we have to declare force majeure. We already declared, but that was a shorter term. Now it’s whatever the period is,” he said.

QatarEnergy had declared force majeure on its entire output of LNG after earlier attacks on its Ras Laffan production hub, which came under fire again on Wednesday. “For production to restart, first we need hostilities to cease,” al-Kaabi said.

The damaged units cost about $26bn to build, al-Kaabi said. He also told Reuters that the scale of the damage from the attacks has set the region back 10 to 20 years.

“If Israel attacked Iran, it’s between Iran and Israel. It has nothing to do with us and the region,” he said.

“And so now, in addition to that, I’m saying that everybody in the world, whether it’s Israel, whether it’s the US, whether it’s any other country, everybody should stay away from oil and gas facilities.”