America came late. Humanity had come from Africa, and spread out over Eurasia. This happened mainly during the ice age, when lower sea levels allowed walking migration where previously a significant swim or float had been required. They moved mainly along the coast line, quickly reaching southeast Asia, and from there even Australia, as early as 50,000 years ago. The precise dates may be in question.
Moving inland into Eurasia was more difficult, in part because of the mountain ranges left by the extinct Tethys ocean. River valleys provide some passable routes. The cold climate formed another barrier which limited the possibilities. Still, even the tundra could provide a good living for those who could adjust to the cold. Southern Europe and central Asia were occupied.
There was another continent waiting: America. The Bering Strait had become dry land and was now part of the Asian tundra. It is now known as Beringia, but it no longer exists. People lived in Beringia probably from 25,000 years ago. At the time they were still part of the Siberian population, as shown by genetic evidence – of their dogs!
Alaska connected to Beringia and is sometimes referred to as East Beringia. It is not fully known when Alaska was settled. There are a few indications as old as 20,000 years (or perhaps even earlier) but the evidence that people were involved is not conclusive. The oldest securely dated human occupation in Alaska is at Swan Point, north of Delani; it has been dated to 14,200 BP. The site was occupied for perhaps only a few hundred years, although people would return at later times. During the brief early phase, microblades were used which are similar to those in use in eastern Siberia. Their diverse cuisine (from excavation of a hearth) included mammoth, horse and caribou! Only the latter would eventually escape extinction.
From Alaska into the plains of North America was no walk in the park. During the ice age, much of Alaska was ice-free: the area was too dry for ice growth. But the southern region was covered in ice, as was almost all of Canada: the glaciers blocked off all routes into the continent. 20,000 years ago was still the depth of the ice age: it was bad luck that the only traversable route into the Americas led to a region north of the impenetrable ice sheet!
Glacial coverage 20,000 years ago. Source: wikipedia
Clovis First – or not?
An ice-free corridor opened up east of the Rocky Mountains, between the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets. This may have happened as early as 15,000 year ago or as late as 13,000. By the later time, bison and elk had began to move across the corridor. The opening provided a route towards Montana. Only a limited number of people made it: the native populations have low genetic diversity, evidence of the ice age genetic bottleneck.
This may have been the origin of the Clovis culture. Clovis sites in North America are seen from 13,000 years ago, and cover a rather brief period of around 300 years. They are defined from a distinctive type of projectile point, which indicates a common origin. The sites are found across much of North America, but are absent from the Pacific coast.
Clovis locations in North America with (red) or without (blue, yellow, black) accurate C-14 dates. The coloured region indicate the density of Clovis sites, being highest in the east. White indicates the ice sheet extent at the time. Source: Waters et al, 2020, The age of Clovis—13,050 to 12,750 cal yr B.P. Science Advances, Vol 6, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaz0455
But this ice-free corridor was not the only way south. From about 17,000 year ago, the islands along the coast of British Columbia began to become ice-free. Island hopping provided another route south, and this could have been done as early as 16,000 years ago. We do not know whether this route was used. Boats would have been needed. The oldest evidence of boat use is several thousand year later along the California coast. The oldest dates for confirmed human occupation along the route are less than 13,000 years old. But the coastal route was open earlier than the other corridor and could have given a limited number of people a head start.
Source: Waters 2019, settlement of the Americas by modern humans. Science 365, eaat5447 Note that the dates refer to animal remains but do not represent human occupation
Clovis was among the oldest population in the region. But it was not the only one. In the west (Oregon and Idaho), a different projectile style has been found, with an oldest date around 400 years before Clovis. At the southern point of South America, yet another style has been dated to 12,900 BP.
There are three conclusions from this. First, although the Clovis culture was early, it was not the first. People had already been present south of the ice sheet for perhaps 1000 to 2000 years. Second, people did not arrive any earlier than 17,000 years ago. This is supported by genetic studies of people, and by their dogs which genetically split from Siberian dogs no earlier than around 17,500 BP. Third, people arrived in South America within a few thousand years: genetic studies indicate that populations in Central America and South America separated around 13,000 years ago. After reaching South America, people moved south along both the Pacific and the Atlantic coast, over several hundred to several thousand years.
The actual arrival probably occurred shortly after 15,000 years ago which would have been almost immediately after the ice-free corridor began to appear. This timing comes from several well-dated remains of hunting of mammoth and camels (!) in Wyoming, Michigan and along the Gulf of Mexico, giving dates between 15,000 and 14,500 years ago. Surprisingly, there are also very old dates from Peru and Chile at 14,200 years ago which requires a rapid spread across every different climate zones. The tip of South America was reached by the time of Clovis.
So far, this forms a consistent picture where a single and isolated founder population spread from Alaska during the waning of the ice age, found a walking buffet on the American plains and rapidly spread out across the new land. The ages favour the coastal route over the in-land corridor, but we lack direct evidence for this.
There are some complications. One theory has a group from Europe reaching the Americas early on. This is based on skull appearances, but it fails against genetic studies: there is no trace of European ancestry among the original native population. The second complication comes from indications of human presence older than 20,000 years ago, at a time the ice sheets still blocked off any access and well before the date where genetic studies place the Beringia founder population. Footprints at White Sands have been dated to 21,000 to 23,000 years ago. But other groups find that these dates could be overestimated by as much as 7,000 years which would bring them into line with the arrival time mentioned above. It remains subject to on-going discussion. Finally, there is a claim that some tribes in the Amazon have a minor genetic link to native populations in PNG and Australia, indicating a common ancestral population. That claim is again disputed, but it is clear that ancient populations east and west of the Andes are not as closely linked to each other, probably related to the separate migration routes along the Pacific and Atlantic coast.
So far for the state of knowledge on the peopling of the Americas. Time to move on to the topic of this post.
Monte Verde
Monte Verde, at the Chinchiuapi Creek. Source: www.science.org, Claudio Latorre
The location is in the Lake District of Southern Chile, along the Chinciuapi Creek which flows into the Maullin River. The landscape is relatively flat and the creek meanders. For the readers of VC, we may mention the (irrelevant) information that it is only 40 km west-southwest of Calbuco volcano – the one with the spectacular VEI-4 eruption in 2015.
The discovery of the site started with farmers finding a strange bone, subsequently identified as from the elephant family. Digging started in 1977, and quickly revealed signs of occupation – including butchery of the elephant’s relatives, as well as ancient forms of llamas. The site had been protected by an anaerobic peat bog, covering the remains and preventing further human interference. There are several separate sites, of which the one called Monte Verde II was found first and remains the best studied.
The site contained many hearths of varying sizes, and 12 huts about 10 square meter in size. Stone tools were found, some as cobbles split to make a workable edge, and in two cases as flaked points. Logs and branches had been worked. Animal remains were plentiful, and plant remains were varied and came from distant places ranging from the coast to the Andes. They included the oldest potato known, and many varieties of seaweed that must have come from at least 60-km away. (At the time, the sea coast was further away.) There was even a footprint left in the clay.
Footprint found at Monte Verde II
Carbon dating yielded an age of around 14,200 years. In 1989, when the results were first presented, such an old date was not easily accepted. It was older than Clovis, and ‘everyone knew’ that the Clovis culture had been the first. Pre-dating Clovis was bad enough, but doing so this far south in South America was worse. How had people gotten here so quickly? Had they bypassed North America? Was this the beginning of the end of the Clovis primacy? Or was the date wrong?
Later work found some indication for an even older layer of occupation, called Monte Verde I. This is strongly disputed, as there is no direct evidence for human involvement in the debris. The date can be several thousand years before Monte Verde II. However, the discussions have focussed on Monte Verde II, as there is extensive evidence for human activity, some of which requiring a trading network and thus an established (albeit thinly populated) society, together with C-14 dating. It is hard to argue with this!
In 1997, a group of independent specialists visited the site to judge the strength of the evidence. They arrived with doubts but by the end of the visit strongly supported the findings. After this, the date became generally accepted. From now on, the Clovis people were firmly relegated to a status as late-comers. Chile had the new oldest ancestor and the peopling of the Americas had to be re-thought. This is the origin of the current view as described above. Blame Monte Verde.
It was not the end of the discussions, and as can happen with the overthrow of a long established fact of supremacy, some of the discussions became vitriolic. The C-14 dates were questioned. This is not uncommon: an independent test is always useful, as is a comparison with for instance luminescence data (which can have its own uncertainty). Often the carbon is taken not from the objects themselves but from associated material. For instance, C-14 ages can not be measured from a footprint! Instead organic material found in the footprint may be used. Neither can a stone be directly dated. (This is also a problem for volcanic eruptions: lava does not contains useable carbon, but vegetation covered and perhaps burned by the flow may be used.) If the carbon is from water (e.g. fish or coral), it may gives dates that are centuries too old because it measures the time when the CO2 was last in the atmosphere. So these are normal discussions, but carrying more than usual emotions.
Eventually the discussions quieted down and the Monte Verde II dates became accepted. As more pre-Clovis sites were found, the ‘Clovis First’ hypothesis was weakened and this removed some of the emotional weight of Monte Verde. Still, the site remained exceptional. There is only one comparable date in all of South America, and that is in Peru, on the far side of the inhospitable and possibly impassable Atacama desert. All other dates are younger than 13,000 years. Genetic studies also favour that Central and South America population only separated around that time. Thus, Monte Verde still retains some of its contentiousness.
Re-dating Monte Verde
The discussion has now been re-opened by a team which carried out an independent investigation at the site. Their paper and especially their conclusion was published this month and it attracted a fair amount of attention. The following derives from that paper.
The Monte Verde site lies in a small valley which contains the current creek. The surrounding plain is a few meters higher. The different surface levels are indicated on the drawing below as T1 to T4. They correspond to three different layers of the soil, called SU1 to 3 – ‘SU’ apparently representing the first letters of the author. (This is not recommended in scientific publications, by the way!)
Source: Surovell et al., 2026, A mid-Holocene age for Monte Verde challenges the timeline of human colonization of South America, Science, Vol. 391, https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/science.adw9217
The SU1 layer is common around the wider area. It has formed over a long time. Carbon dated old wood from the site shows that the base of SU1 is 16,000 years old. The SU1b layer is a wood layer: measurements give it an age of 14,000 years, consistent with the reported dating for Monte Verde II. SU1c is a layer of organic clay, dated to 10,000 to 11,000 years but with some uncertainty.
Above the clay is a 5-cm thick tephra layer, indicated as SU1d in the figure. The team associates this with the Lepué Tephra, a widespread layer dated to 11,000 years ago. The layer above, SU1e, is considered a young layer of sediments and peat. (The paper assigns dates for SU1d for two pieces of wood of 3,000 and 100 years, but in one case this represents an intrusion (e.g., a plant root) and in another case the piece was mislabeled and belongs to SU1e – private communication.)
The T2 surface is where the debris from the Monte Verde II settlement is located. It formed from river bed erosion into the SU1 layer, followed by sediment deposition. This sediment is named SU2 in the figure. The Monte Verde II debris is just above the interface, so near the bottom of SU2. One piece of wood from near the bottom of this layer, albeit not collected in this study but in the 1997 visit, gives an age of 13,000 year. Measurements higher up give ages of 8,000 to 2,000 years. This indicates that SU2 is mostly considerably younger than SU1. The older piece of wood may have come from layer SU1b, and fallen into the ditch at the time of the erosion. However, this is speculative.
The authors propose that the erosion that formed the ditch or creek happened in the mid-holocene. Between 15,000 and 11,000 years, this region was a temperate rainforest and marshland. After 11,000 years the region dried out during a much warmer phase, allowing the creek to form and cut into the drier landscape. The proposed scenario is shown in the figure below, taken from their paper.
In this scenario, Monte Verde II dates to the middle holocene and is younger than 8,000 years. It is quite a change from the original 14,200 age! The C-14 dating was correct, but the association of the dated material with the settlement was not.
It is a strong case, though perhaps not yet fully conclusive. It explains much of the appearance of the site, and also puts Monte Verde II among a more developed culture where for instance the trading of food over long distance is plausible. It also avoids the need for a very fast expansion deep into South America. However, it requires that all the debris used in the previous C-14 dating from material associated with the Monte Verde II excavation came from material which had originally come from elsewhere, and had fallen in: the hamlet was built on this material. One might have expected a wider range of dates from this scenario.
A volcanic connection
The crucial point of the argument lies in the Lepué Tephra. This layer was not found at the Monte Verde II village itself, but only at the T1 area. This suggests that this tephra layer was removed by the ditch erosion, and thus that the ditch or creek formed after this time. (The alternative, not mentioned in the paper, would be that this layer was removed long after the village had been there. A second erosion surface was not observed, but a single flood around the incised river bed could perhaps have done this.) It is now up to other teams, most likely the original one, to make these checks and to confirm (or otherwise) this new result.
What do we know about this tephra? The Lepué Tephra is found across northwest Patagonia, and is assigned to Volcán Michimahuida, near Chaitén. It lies 160 km southeast of Monte Verde. Chaitén had a major rhyolitic eruption in 2008 (VEI 4), after millennia of dormancy. In contrast, Michimahuida is andesitic, so its eruptions are easy to distinguish from Chaitén. Michimahuida is also much taller than Chaitén, at 2400 meters.
As an aside, this region of southern Chile may be under-watched: there have been three major eruptions here already in the past 20 years: Chaitén in 2008, Puyehue-Cordon Caulle in 2011 and Calbuco in 2015.
The Lepué Tephra layer, as found in a location near the volcano. Source: Alloway et al. 2017, Journal of Quaternary Science, 32, 795–829 (paywalled/top secret – not for public consumption)
The volcano is glaciated which can make it hard to study. It had a phreatomagmatic VEI-6 (!) eruption dated to 10,500 years ago, and a VEI-5 3,000 years later. There was also an eruption in 1834, observed by Charles Darwin, when lava reached the sea. The summit glacier fills in a caldera which may have formed in the 10,500 year old Lepué eruption. It is one of the largest eruptions in this region since the ice age, based on the extent of the tephra. It also formed a pyroclastic flow which filled in a valley and is known as the Amarillo Ignimbrite.
Volcán Michimahuida. Source: https://www.andeshandbook.org/montanismo/cerro/283/michinmahuida
If Monte Verde II is as old as it used to be, it will not be the only such site in the area. In that case, there must be other finds waiting to be found underneath the Lepué Tephra. People were already present before this eruption, but the question is whether they show similarity to Monte Verde II. If not, this would further strengthen the case for the younger date.
Final points
Monte Verde II started out being controversial. It pulled the rug from underneath the Clovis First hypothesis, and people took this personally. A site visit by independent experts was needed before it became accepted. But the disputes did not die down. Every aspect was challenged. One wonders, how much of that was down to personal opinions rather than the weight of evidence? This recent paper returns to Clovis First and links the re-dating of Monte Verde II to the case for the primacy of the ice-free corridor for populating North America, against that of the coastal route. It is a bit of a jump.
Regardless of the final date of Monte Verde II, the prior research had already shifted the paradigm. It opened up the study of the pre-Clovis settlement of the Americas, allowing an unbiassed look at the timing of the opening corridor versus the dates of pre-Clovis sites in North America. Clovis First now seems rooted in the past: the question is what society gave rise to Clovis.
I’ll end with Tom Dillehay, the original investigator of the site, who in 2019 responded to another paper questioning Monte Verde II. He wrote: “it is healthy for the discipline to criticize new and old discoveries, but it should be done in a constructive, judicious, balanced, and empirically justifiable manner.” This new paper has done just that. I am looking forward to the inevitable response with great interest.
Albert, March 2026
Further reading (but may not be open access)
Waters, 2019, Late Pleistocene exploration and settlement of the Americas by modern humans. Science, Vol 365, https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aat5447
Dillehay, 2008, Monte Verde: Seaweed, Food, Medicine, and the Peopling of South America, Science, 320, https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.1156533
Surovell et al., 2026, A mid-Holocene age for Monte Verde challenges the timeline of human colonization of South America, Science, Vol. 391, https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/science.adw9217
Great post Albert. You have touched a beehive!
There are sites in Brazil with datings beyond the 30 000 y mark! Of course Clovis/americanfirsters will contest that enthusiastically, which they did.
I’ll try to reach Stefan Milo’s podcasts in Youtube concerning the long lasting debate – when I have more time. But theories for the arrival of humans in South America abound. However, as you said, “such an old date was not easily accepted” and the evidences so far are poor.
Have you heard of Serra da Capivara in NE Brazil? The french-brazilian antropologist Niede Guidon’s “… findings were first brought into the spotlight in 1986 with a publication in the British magazine Nature, in which she claimed to have discovered 32,000-year-old hearths and human artifacts. Although such early dates have not been generally accepted, Guidon and her colleagues have shown that the area was occupied by Paleoindian and Archaic rock art cultures subsisting on broad-spectrum hunting and gathering.” Worth taking a look, at least to see the beautiful paintings on the caves, in Wikipedia
I have a problem with much of science which is the view that “absence of proof is proof of absence”.
There is a general problem in human palaeontology in that humans were quite rare, and sites are hard to find. This is often due to ice ages destroying evidence (including deglaciation flooding the best areas, like doggerland). Further nice arid desert areas are really easy to find remains, whilst fertile farmland really is not, and preservation is equally slanted.
For palaeontology there is the problem that early man is, IMHO, grossly underrated. Anatomically modern humans have occupied and thrived in the high arctic (inuit and dorset before them). These people were STONE AGE, as was all of america including aztec, inca, maya etc. These people all had perfectly capable coastal boats which they used with skill and could routinely travel long distances, including across the high arctic (routinely). That they were all made of perishable leather or reed doesn’t help preservation.
People dream up all sorts of ways to get to Australia or America, but nobody considers them capable of making a half decent boat, despite it being common in (economically) stone age cultures. Pretty well every kid who lives near a lake will try going out on a log, it’s not rocket science.
Personally I think the best definition of “modern human” is the group that prey on megafauna (usually wiping them out), track that and you track us. I think the game changer might be the use of half-time wolves as a symbiotic relationship, but there is sadly little evidence of this.
This neatly explains the ecological niche filled by modern man that allowed him to be successful in eurasia despite Neanderthal being better equipped for ice-age Eurasia. A few humans and their semi-tame wolves accosting a neanderthal party would be dominant, even today dogs are fearsome weapons.
PS Strangely africa still has its megafauna and most of the “native” peoples are known to have migrated in agricultural/pastoral times. The Masai and even those further south who displace bushmen and hottentot. These were not megafauna specialists as that had long gone extinct in the rest of the world.
There’s a though!
End Of Rant……
Not a rant – a valid case! Ocean-worthy boats are not easy though. Even the Polynesian expansion, from superb sailors, came late. I had a look what it would have taken to pass the ice sheet by boat. It extended along the entire south coast of Alaska and the east coast of Canada. By boat, that would take the entire summer season with no return. (Why would you return, anyway?) It depends on good luck (it is quite dangerous to sail along a glacier), and on places to land on the way, and that did not exist until at the very earliest 17,000 BP. I don’t see that happen, to be honest. I am sceptical about human presence before 20,000 BP, but it would be unwise to judge before looking for evidence! Once south of the ice, yes – boat travel to South America would have been entirely feasible for the people of that time. That could have taken them as far as Peru. Beyond that is the desert coast and that would have been a very difficult barrier. It is much easier via Brazil.
The author of the paper that is discussed in the post has been trying to overturn ages of pre-Clovis sites for some time. That goal shows in the paper in between the lines, both in the introduction and the discussions. But the science in the paper is sound, so I have discussed it as addressing only this particular site. To me, Clovis seems rather late to be the first. (There may have been a new influx of people, of course, bringing new tools.) My feeling is that Clovis is when people learned to live on the prairies, where food is plenty but access to water is a main limitation. I would compare it to the Cambrian explosion: there was plenty of life before the Cambrian, but it didn’t leave fossils as easily so was hard to see. But it is just speculation on my part.
As for megafauna: Africa is the only place where it survived humanity. It is also the place where both evolved together. However, around 1 million years ago there was a major extinction even among African megafauna, which may have been from climate-related or our fault! (Or both) And of course, it includes all of our human relatives – not a single one survived.
And adding one thing I forgot: for sailing past the ice sheet, it couldn’t be done from Beringia. The sheet extended rot the Aleutian islands and Beringia was much further north. Just an added hurdle
My point is that its not a journey. Inuit survive perfectly happily on seal/whales and etc and live on sea ice. That is I doubt it would have been a journey, ie we are here and we want to get there, more a low level occupation that extends past the worst glaciation. They can live on sea ice, which would have been all year round in places, so that’s not really a problem. Similarly, the desert belts have plenty of fish and shellfish. Its modern urban humans who call these places uninhabitable, others called them home, even in historic times. Very low population density very often, but humans handle that just fine.
Incidentally, to find out how far you can routinely go in a kayak, speak to a user. Its a very long way.
Seagoing boats MUST have existed in the Stone Age. How do we know this? Australia.
Australia was never connected to Asia because at the Wallace Line there are deepwater channels. Humans crossed those channels tens of thousands of years ago. Ergo they had seaworthy boats at that point.
Not oceanworthy boats, but seaworthy boats.
The existence of boats is not in dispute. To get to Australia by island hopping, sea lanes up to 20 miles wide would need to be covered. Small enough that land on the other side could be seen, large enough that swimming would not do. But passing Alaska and Canada is a different problem. The Inuit are a relatively recent arrival in the arctic, of the past few thousand years. The Aleutian Islands were settled only from 5,000 years onward (in an expansion that also reached Alaska). Boats that could handle such trips are not known before that, and from the fact that the Aleutian expansion took so long, may not have existed. To get to mainland America during the depth of the ice age would have had to be done via the Aleutian Islands.
It depends on what you mean by seagoing. People row across the atlantic in rather small boats (routinely, it seems these days). Coastal fishermen routinely fish out of sight of land, particularly in calmer seasons. Modern humans really do underestimate archaic technology and capability. We occupy, survive and pretty well thrive over almost all ecosystems, and have for a vast period of time. The problem is finding remains. If you think Neanderthal and archaic humans lived in caves, and only caves, remember many primates build beds to sleep on at night, early humans almost certainly built primitive structures but they are all long perished. Remember they were as smart as the average human today.
OK, maybe simple shelters ….
It’s true that absence of proof (confirmation) is no falsification. This even applies to supernatural events like wonders … and even more for most events of history. Good science acknowledges that we know less than we know. There are more unknown facts in the world than known facts.
Science is good in observing laws and causal relations … but bad in discovering the truth in past single cases.
I think that there are many steps towards the “modern human”, and it depends on what you understand with the label. In my opinion the last major step towards modern humanity occured around 6000 years ago with the beginning of great civilizations like Sumer, Egypt and comparable cultural developments elsewhere around the world.
Quite the strong swarm near eldey…again..but also some larger quakes at svarts, ill be sceptical abt misplacement for now tho. But man if this is how it starts then that would be cool as heck
Interesting also the swarm of Hekla/Vatnafjöll and Torfajökull. Is Hekla going to “activate” Torfajökull?
Added to this there occured several quakes between Reykjavik and Ljosufjöll. In the Medieval Rekjanes Fires period they didn’t have the ability to observe most of these quakes. The Akranes region on half way between Ljosufjöll and Reykjavik had a significant accumulation of quakes.
Quite the busy day out there. Quite a few 3s and 4s on the Reykjanes Ridge.
Interesting swarm. Magnitude and intensity build up gradually; it’s throwing out M 4s, which is not easy. Might be worth watching.
As per Carl articles, the volcanic system where this is happening is called Skerjadjúp. It had a much smaller swarm on Feb 7.
Out of curiosity: is it possible for humans to navigate pumice rafts? I read that they served as transpostation means for animals and plants between ocean islands. Maybe it is a silly question but I’ve seen giant such rafts navigating around Tonga and New Zealand vocanic islands.
They can certainly last a long time. Ships were running into large pumice rafts several years after the 1883 Krakatoa eruption. They reported them heavily encrusted with barnacles and seaweed.
The eruption of Krakatoa, and subsequent phenomena (Royal Society, 1888)
Thank you Bruce!
But they are not traversable. It would be like walking on broken ice.
Thanks Albert. Just wondering…
Very interesting, thank you Albert.
“We” may think a bit too much in terms of exploring new territory on purpose, using typical human habits.
New populations of species in area’s they weren’t before, also get there by extreme conditions, for example weather in combination with other ‘coincidences’.
So what was the first human label for “America”? Was there even a name for the continent during the Atzek or Inka ages? The continent was there, before Amerigo Vespucci was born, the godfather of America, and before Martin Seemüller baptized the continent as “Americus”. Did the pre-Colombian natives know that there actually was a great double continent from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego?
My guess: something like “land”, in a local language? That is, there was no concept of separate “continents”.
Note also that “Asia”, “Africa” and even “Europe” originally meant quite different things than nowadays.
The question is probably whether it is ‘land’ or ‘my land’ ..
40th day of Piton de la Fournaise: https://www.linfo.re/la-reunion/societe/piton-de-la-fournaise-40-jours-d-eruption-et-de-beaux-spectacles
They observed a decrease of activity during the last hours. Aline Paltier: “Since this morning there was no more visible lava fountain, but still a strong degassing. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to anticipate the end of eruption, it is just known that the activity fluctuated strongly during this eruption, we had phases of rapid increase, decrease, and there we are in a phase currently of decrease in surface activity.”
The ocean entry has built new land up to 142m into the ocean with an area of 3.7 hectares (37,000 square meters).
Done: https://imazpress.com/volcan/piton-de-la-fournaise-clap-de-fin-apres-41-jours-d-eruption
Good paper came out about the 2025 earthquake swarms under the Abu Volcano Group that I was following:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2025GL119316
As expected, no short-term concern, but a good reminder that “dormant since 8,800 BP” =/= “extinct”.
Multiple communities are built directly on top of this volcanic field, by the way.
Rather topical dogs (not wolves) turn out to be common with humans ~15k years ago from britain to turkey. Its unclear how much size differences (ie breeding) also occurres.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn0ky1n791go
Professors of genetics on BBC radio yesterday said dog-wolf genetics suggest split 40-50k years ago. That nicely coincides with start of megafauna extermination.
Not me guv, it were my dog …..
More random fake quakes at Iceland
It’s very cold, -18°C, in the area, so these are frost quakes. Looking at the drumplots, there are hundreds of tiny blips. These will fool the detection algorithm to think they are actual quakes. This is a common phenomenon in the area and happens when the temperature drops while the ground is saturated with water.
small katla swarm today
added to this:
– a “family” of quakes between Bardarbunga and Kistufell
– three quakes between Grindavik and Sylingarfell … There’s still the volcano with a superior chance to erupt next in Iceland.
It appears our patience has been rewarded (see comments of chad and mine below the previous article) regarding the chemistry of Kilauea’s lava during this episode, with this week’s Volcano Watch: https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/hvo/news/volcano-watch-taking-kilaueas-temperature. To briefly summarize:
* April-May 2018 (before summit collapse): 6.7-7.0 w% MgO (=1159-1165°C);
* 2020-2023: 6.0-7.2 w% MgO (=1144-1170°C);
* first 42 episodes of this eruption: 7.0-8.2 w% MgO (=1165-1191°C).
With episode 11, there was an early peak in w% MgO. This then steadily dropped to 7.2 w% MgO around the early June episodes, followed by a steady increase. One sample of episode 42 had the highest percentage thusfar recorded in the eruption, though to me it seems to be plateauing a bit at 7.6 w% MgO.
I’ll quote the third-to-last and second-to-last paragraphs from the article, as they summarize it better than I could as volcano enjoyer, and far from being a volcanologist:
“The increase in temperature of both glass (liquid component) and olivine show us that Kīlauea’s shallow magma reservoirs have been heating up over the past decade and continue to show these signals through episode 42.”
“What does this mean for the long-term behavior of Kīlauea? It’s possible that the increasing temperatures observed for the current eruption might have to do with its prolonged episodic nature—hotter, fresher magmas entering the system are driving repeated eruptive episodes. With temperatures still elevated, it could mean the episodic activity will continue for some time. It may also reflect somewhat high rates of magma supply to the shallow reservoir beneath Kīlauea’s summit, which could lead to continued episodes or an eruption elsewhere on the volcano.”
Does the increasing MgO content mean that the magma is becoming more primitive?
They say: “lava erupting now is hotter than eruptions from 2018–2023.” So it seems possible that hot magma can rise quickly from a deep source without cooling.
HVO has difficulties in monitoring the volcanoes because of bad weather and power outages. But there was a new peak of deep Pahala earthquakes on 26th March that indicates a high recharge of Kilauea’s magma reservoirs.
Mentioned by Volcanophil
2026-03-27 03:49:53
Earthquake
Magnitude: 2.17 M
Depth: 39.08 km
2026-03-27 03:47:16
Earthquake
Magnitude: 2.45 M
Depth: 42.99 km
2026-03-27 03:44:15
Earthquake
Magnitude: 2.41 M
Depth: 42.28 km
2026-03-27 03:43:24
Earthquake
Magnitude: 2.17 M
Depth: 33.44 km
2026-03-27 03:34:26
Earthquake
Magnitude: 2.65 M
Depth: 40.46 km
2026-03-27 03:32:42
Earthquake
Magnitude: 2.37 M
Depth: 42.86 km
2026-03-27 02:40:12
Earthquake
Magnitude: 1.74 M
Depth: 39.54 km
2026-03-27 02:34:35
Earthquake
Magnitude: 1.93 M
Depth: 42.90 km
2026-03-27 02:28:17
Earthquake
Magnitude: 1.81 M
Depth: 37.25 km
2026-03-26 23:24:47
Earthquake
Magnitude: 1.92 M
Depth: 36.31 km
2026-03-26 23:23:35
Earthquake
Magnitude: 2.04 M
Depth: 41.22 km
2026-03-26 23:20:21
Earthquake
Magnitude: 1.83 M
Depth: 41.51 km
2026-03-26 21:45:38
Earthquake
Magnitude: 1.93 M
Depth: 37.39 km
2026-03-26 21:27:10
Earthquake
Magnitude: 1.90 M
Depth: 38.23 km
2026-03-26 21:25:25
Earthquake
Magnitude: 2.09 M
Depth: 38.48 km
2026-03-26 15:59:51
Earthquake
Magnitude: 1.83 M
Depth: 39.59 km
2026-03-26 15:58:03
Earthquake
Magnitude: 1.58 M
Depth: 40.44 km
2026-03-26 15:55:17
Earthquake
Magnitude: 1.77 M
Depth: 42.00 km
2026-03-26 15:53:54
Earthquake
Magnitude: 2.08 M
Depth: 40.49 km
2026-03-26 15:51:49
Earthquake
Magnitude: 2.24 M
Depth: 41.35 km
Whoa! There’s five bursts of spasmodic tremor. This is the most Pahala tremor we’ve had in a while. One of the “starter” quakes being a 2.6 is remarkable too.
On the other side Mauna Kea’s northeast flank had an earthquake swarm 5-10km deep. Two quakes had a strength of M3 and was strong enough to be felt by humans.
Was it caused by post-volcanic geologic developments or is there a magmatic cause possible?
Here is a short article about the Mauna Kea quakes: https://www.bigislandvideonews.com/2026/03/27/unusual-cluster-of-earthquakes-recorded-in-hamakua/
HVO has published a statement about the earthquakes: They occured on the former Kohala rift system which runs along the north side of Mauna Kea towards Hilo and is buried 5-10km deep.
Yes the magma is more primitive, its not just leftover 2018 magma but presumably a mix of that with some very hot stuff coming in. The current lava is erupting at just under 1200 C and may well go past that soon if the trend continues.
Also of note the MgO spiked fast from the eruption start up to E3-4, then dropped back down until about E23-26, and has since increased to a new high in the last few episodes.
The bottom of the MgO percentage plot coincides with the point fountains started getting really high over 250m, and trends with both increasing fountain height, higher eruption intensity, bigger volume and wider intervals between episodes. The current interval follows the biggest fountains yet, and probably highest eruption rate, it might be the first gap to be over a month long but the connection issues make it hard to trust the tiltmeters.
In any case, if the magma supply remains very high for the forseeable future its not unlikely the MgO content will keep increasing further, it may be over 9% by the end of the year, even close to 10% by the time the caldera overflows some time in 2027. That would probably come with a temperature of close to 1300 C. Its far from certain but it would be incredible to watch.
Theres also the distinct, and unusual, option that with such primitive and likely volatile rich magma, the fountains could reach extreme heights. Not just 1959 scale its already there… but something on the order of 700-1000m, and much more significant tephra fallout. Although the pressure needed to erupt like this might be too high and favor flank eruptions instead (as in 1959)
It will be intresting to watch yes. Some of the more primitive most highly magnesium rich magmas ( that are liquids and not ultra rich crystal mushes ) ever erupted from Kilauea and from Iceland sits at over 15% MgO oxide content and both close to 1300 c or even more, souch hot picrite basalt lava will be nearly white hot when its first exposed to air like what was seen in later stages of Kilauea IKI.
After Kilauea Iki the 1960 low ERZ eruption in Kapoho also had in the later stages relatively hot magma from the summit eruption with 200-300m high lava fountains. Very different to the more effusive 2018 LERZ eruption. Fissure 8 2018 looked more like some Mauna Loa eruption cones.
The Kapoho eruption shows that the primitive magnesium rich magma can reach to a low riftzone eruption, if it happens in relation to an episodic summit eruption like 1959 or the present one. This means that a possible flank eruption after the current summit eruption can include high “explosive” lava fountains.
https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU26/EGU26-6017.html
This is sadly just a poster for a presentation in may, but its the first source i could find that states a dike volume for april 1st, 2025 (svartsengi). It states a domain contraction volume of ~35million m³ and 100million for the dike.
To clarify, “SU” refers to Stratigraphic Unit, not the first author’s last name.
Interesting post, thanks!
It was too good a coincidence to not mention .. a different naming convention would have avoided it
Interesting new article (open access) into caldera resurgence at Kikai:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-026-03347-9
Thanks for sharing. While I think it would be a typical assumption to think that a volcano like this couldn’t create another vei-7 eruption in a geologically recent timeframe given that it already put out the largest eruption of the Holocene, the presence of such a large magma chamber at this point indicates that may not be a correct assumption. Given, it seems to have a fairly low melt % based on the modeling, but the fact that it has likely completely refilled itself after draining itself in the enormous Akahoya eruption shows a very striking recharge rate.
Question I would have is whether the magma recharge rate in this instance was just a product of the reduced pressure in the emptied magma chamber making it easier for post-caldera rebound to occur. Or was that just a product of the natural magmatic input? Likely a bit of both, but it’s clear that if the same rate would continue.
The rate of refill in the magma chamber (assuming 220 km^3 chamber size in the article) is about .0285 cubic KM per year since the Akahoya eruption. Still not enough from what I can see to recreate another Akahoya eruption during our lifetimes, but still enough to produce a large eruption.
Piton hasn’t had enough: https://www.linfo.re/tags/volcan-piton-fournaise
On Saturday 28th March it continued after a break of only 15 hours, and made Ocean Entry yesterday.
https://www.linfo.re/public/images/2026/3/17/lave-rencontre-ocean-eruption-piton-de-la-fournaise–9c6b__183397_w-620.webp
El Nino is expected to occur in summer: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf
(prediction starting on page 23)
El Nino means that the west side of the Americas get more wet weather, maybe also hurricanes towards Mexico. On a global perspective an El Nino usually also increases the global temperature a bit above average. It allows a preview into the future of increasing global temperature by Greenhouse Effect.
New post is up! Lavaglyphing and lavasculpturing – you heard it here first
https://www.volcanocafe.org/lavatars-lavatrix-and-lavaland/