The Boswell crest: a hooded hawk, with the motto Vraye Foy

HoodedHawk

More debate over the timeline of human colonization of South America

·Archaeology·No comments

The paper

A mid-Holocene age for Monte Verde challenges the timeline of human colonization of South America

Surovell, Todd A.; Méndez, César; García, Juan-Luis; Lüthgens, Christopher; Thompson, Jay M.; Latorre, Claudio

Science, vol. 391, no. 6791, pp. 1283-1288, 2026-03-19 · doi.org/10.1126/science.adw9217

Chinchihuapi Creek at the Monte Verde site: a slow brown stream between grassy, eroding banks
Chinchihuapi Creek at the Monte Verde site, September 2012. Photo: Rodolfo Ditzel Lacoa, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

For three decades Monte Verde, in southern Chile, held the earliest date for people in South America: about 14,500 years ago, older than the Clovis sites of North America and even than the earliest firm sites in Alaska, the presumed way in. A team led by Todd Surovell and Claudio Latorre, the first to study the site independently of its excavators in nearly fifty years, now argues that the layer behind that date is Middle Holocene: 8,200 to 4,200 years old.

The case is in the valley’s layers. An old terrace holds a bed of wood 14,750 to 13,400 years old, the same age as the site’s famous dates, capped by marsh mud and by a volcanic ash laid down 11,000 years ago. Chinchihuapi Creek later cut through all of it, ash included, and filled the cut with new sand, dated 8,600 to 2,800 years. Monte Verde II lies at the base of that fill, so it is younger than the ash; its Ice Age wood, the authors argue, was washed in from the old terrace, as the creek still carries wood today.

If they are right, Monte Verde no longer shows that people reached South America before Clovis, and a first entry down the ice-free corridor through the interior of North America is back in play. It does not settle the larger question. In a Perspective alongside the paper, Jason Rech points out that other sites now look older than Clovis, among them the human footprints at White Sands, New Mexico, dated to 23,000–21,000 years ago.

Map of the Americas: Monte Verde in southern Chile, White Sands and Clovis in New Mexico, the earliest firm sites in Alaska and the Yukon, and the Pacific coast and ice-free corridor routes, with an inset of the Lake DistrictMap of the Americas: Monte Verde in southern Chile, White Sands and Clovis in New Mexico, the earliest firm sites in Alaska and the Yukon, and the Pacific coast and ice-free corridor routes, with an inset of the Lake District
Monte Verde; White Sands and Clovis, the Clovis culture’s type site, in New Mexico; the earliest firm sites in Alaska and the Yukon; and the two routes south proposed for the first people (schematic), with the Lake District around the site. Drawn from Natural Earth (public domain).

The whole story is in the deep dive on the Science page, with a cross-section of the valley, a timeline of every date, what the team found layer by layer, Rech’s Perspective and the caveats: Monte Verde, re-dated.

Words to know.

  • Pleistocene / Holocene: the Ice Age epoch, and the warmer epoch that began about 11,700 years ago. The Middle Holocene here means about 8,200–4,200 years ago.
  • Clovis: a North American culture known for its distinctive spear points, about 13,000 years old. Sites older than Clovis are called “pre-Clovis.”
  • Tephra: ash and fragments thrown out by a volcanic eruption. A known tephra layer works as a time marker.
  • Alluvial terrace: a flat step of sediment left by a stream that later cut down below it.
  • Redeposition: old material eroded from one place and buried again in younger sediment, which makes the younger layer look older than it is.

The cartwheeling snake

·Science·No comments

A dwarf reed snake rolling along a racetrack 2.2 meters long, seen from the side, slowed eight times. Video: Yosuke Kojima and Ibuki Fukuyama.
The same run at actual speed: about 2 meters of track in about a second. Video: Yosuke Kojima and Ibuki Fukuyama, from the paper’s Video S1B.

Nature’s “Daily Briefing” had this: Dwarf reed snakes in Borneo escape by rolling: the back half of the body curls into a hoop and rolls along the ground like a wheel, while the head stays up and pointed where the snake is going.

Yosuke Kojima and his colleagues filmed thirteen dwarf reed snakes in the lab in 2019 and 2022, and six ordinary reed snakes for comparison. Every dwarf reed snake rolled; none of the others did. Rolling is fast: a peak of about 2.3 meters a second on average, four times their speed when slithering. The snakes usually ended a run by diving under something nearby.

What interested the authors is the head. A rolling body ought to take the head round with it, and a snake that cannot see where it is going cannot steer. These keep the head steady while the rest of the body cartwheels: the tail pushes off, the body arches over in an S, and the arch swings down past the head to start the next roll.

The paper: Kojima, Fukuyama, Hossman, Kaliang and Nishikawa, “Locomotor kinematics and head stabilization in rolling snakes“, Current Biology 36, R1061–R1063 (19 October 2026).

Walking Dead in the Real World

·Family, Photography, Travel·No comments

The Walking Dead was filmed in and around Atlanta from its first season in 2010, and the city’s own places stood in for the show’s: a downtown expressway, a flooded quarry, an old metal works. Olivia and I photographed three of them on one afternoon in September, and what follows is the show’s view of each beside what is there now.

Jackson Street Bridge

Old Fourth Ward, Atlanta. Rick rides into the dead city — season 1, “Days Gone Bye”, and the poster.

The shot on the season-one poster — Rick Grimes on horseback, riding down an empty Freedom Parkway toward the Atlanta skyline — was taken from this bridge, looking west. In the show the lanes are choked with abandoned cars leaving the city; on a Saturday afternoon they carry the usual traffic. It is the most visited Walking Dead spot in Atlanta, and the graffiti on the rail is part of the pilgrimage.

Rick rides down Freedom Parkway into Atlanta, the outbound lanes jammed with the cars that fled.
The frame itself — Rick rides down Freedom Parkway into Atlanta, the outbound lanes jammed with the cars that fled. (AMC)

The season-one poster, taken from the same bridge.
The season-one poster, taken from the same bridge. (AMC)
The view from the bridge, looking west down Freedom Parkway to downtown.
The view from the bridge, looking west down Freedom Parkway to downtown.
Olivia on the bridge.
Olivia on the bridge.

Bellwood Quarry

Westside Park, Atlanta. The survivors’ camp above the city — season 1.

The camp where Rick finds Lori, Carl and Shane at the end of the first episode, and where the first season’s Atlanta group lives, was filmed at Bellwood Quarry, a worked-out granite pit on the west side of the city. The city has since flooded it as a drinking-water reservoir and opened the land around it as Westside Park in 2021, so the dry quarry floor of the show is now a lake. The cliff face the camp looked out on is the same; the downtown and Midtown towers stand on the skyline beyond it.

Shane, Lori, Carl and the others at the RV, the quarry's rim behind them.
The camp in season one — Shane, Lori, Carl and the others at the RV, the quarry’s rim behind them. (AMC)

The camp as the comic drew it, and as the show built it at the quarry.
The camp as the comic drew it, and as the show built it at the quarry. (Image Comics / AMC)
The flooded quarry from the park's overlook, the skyline beyond.
The flooded quarry from the park’s overlook, the skyline beyond.
The cut granite face across the water.
The cut granite face across the water.
The whole quarry, from the pump house on the left to the far wall.
The whole quarry, from the pump house on the left to the far wall.
Olivia at the overlook.
Olivia at the overlook.

Terminus

Collier Metals, 793 Windsor Street SW, Atlanta. “Sanctuary for all. Community for all. Those who arrive survive.” — the end of season 4 and the start of season 5.

Terminus, the railway-yard “sanctuary” whose signs draw the survivors in at the end of the fourth season, was the old Collier Metals plant on Windsor Street, south of downtown. The big TERMINUS letters were mounted across the top row of windows on the brick block, and the yard in front, where Rick’s group walks in, is the gated lot in these pictures. The plant is still a working scrap-metal business, so the pictures are from the street.

Terminus as the show dressed it, the survivors walking into the yard.
Terminus as the show dressed it, the survivors walking into the yard. (AMC)

The whole plant from the air, the rail-yard side.
The whole plant from the air, the rail-yard side — the side a train blocked on the day; Windsor Street is beyond the buildings. (AMC)

The TERMINUS letters close up, on the top row of windows of the rail-yard face.
The letters close up, on the top row of windows of the rail-yard face. (Gene Page / AMC)

Terminus burning, the start of season 5.
Terminus burning, the start of season 5. (AMC)
The Collier Metals gate on Windsor Street, the Terminus block behind it.
The Collier Metals gate on Windsor Street, the Terminus block behind it.
The same brick block, its windows now boarded.
The same brick block, its windows now boarded — the letters ran along the top row.
Closer, from the gate.
Closer, from the gate.
The sheds behind the main block, along the fence.
The sheds behind the main block, along the fence.
The whole plant from across the street.
The whole plant from across the street.
A red-shouldered hawk in the trees outside Terminus.
A red-shouldered hawk in the trees outside Terminus, the same afternoon.
The hawk again, watching the street.
The hawk again, watching the street.

Credits

Photographs by Olivia and me, 13 September 2026. The poster, the stills and the comic panel are AMC’s and Image Comics’, shown here for the comparison.