Earth Ancients

Hueyatlaco is an archeological site in the Valsequillo Basin near the city of Puebla, Mexico. After excavations in the 1960s, the site became notorious due to geochronologists' analyses that indicated human habitation at Hueyatlaco was dated to ca. 250,000 years before the present. These controversial findings are orders of magnitude older than the scientific consensus for habitation of the New World (which generally traces widespread human migration to the New World to 13,000 to 16,000 ybp). In 1973, Virginia Steen-MacIntyre, Malde and Roald Fryxell returned to Hueyatlaco to re-examine the geographic strata and more accurately determine an age for the tool-bearing strata. They were able to rule out Malde's streambed hypothesis. Moreover, the team undertook an exhaustive analysis of volcanic ash and pumice from the original excavation site and the surrounding region. Using the zircon Fission track dating method, geochemist C.W. Naeser dated samples of ash from Hueyatlaco's tool-bearing strata to 370,000 ybp +