12500 BC to 1469

Monte Verde to Rapa Nui

Monte Verde, in southern Chile, is one of the oldest known human sites in the Americas, about 14,500 years old. In the Atacama, the Chinchorro fishers mummify their dead from about 5000 BC, two thousand years before Egypt. Far out in the Pacific, Polynesian voyagers settle Rapa Nui, Easter Island, and later raise its great stone moai.