53. Relatives in South America

4. Possible Relatives in the Americas

Hueyatlaco site (Puebla, Mexico)

by George Weber

The Hueyatlaco site is not so much famous for the finds made there but for the ferocious and apparently interminable controversy surrounding its dates, above all in the USA where most of the researchers have come from. The rest of the world and including the host country, Mexico, wisely prefers to stay out of the fray. Careers have been wrecked, friendships ruined, conspiracy theories left howling. There are countless conflicting "facts", "counter facts", claims and opinions, held so firmly by so many quarreling individuals, factions and institutions, that any of it should be disregarded until the dating mess has been sorted out.

Hueyatlaco was discovered and first excavated by Cynthia Irwin-Williams in 1960, with further excavations from 1962 to 1966. Controversy followed the publications of her discoveries and especially the dating of the site to 1,000,000 years. Yes, you read right. One Million Years. Work briefly resumed with a new team in 2004 and it was hoped that new finds together with new and more reliable dating technologies would sort things out. It did not. The new dating reduced the claimed age to a milder but still mind-boggling 250,000 years. So now there are not one but two incredible dates with an an additional mystery in the 750,000 year gap between the two. Dates as wild and wide-ranging as these can mean anything and nothing. Clearly, dating at his site will need to be repeated and reconfirmed as soon as tempers have cooled and (here we go again) new and better dating methods have become available.

Perhaps one day we'll know why the original dates were so far outside expected age range and so far apart, whether they were mis-datings or whether our current ideas on ancient America are completely wrong. Right now, all we know is that we do not know... except, of course, for the mystery-mongers who always know, and who will always be with us.

If a major archaeological research effort is justified anywhere in the Americas then it is at Hueyatlaco.

Excavations in were first carried out in the 1960s and resumed briefly in 2004.