THE first Americans used seaweed as a medicine and a food.
The range of seaweed and land plant remains found at Monte Verde in southern Chile, widely accepted as the oldest settlement in the Americas, suggests the settlers knew enough about both coastal and inland resources to give them a good supply of food year-round.
The seaweed found at the site was carbon-dated at 13,980 to 14,220 years old by Tom Dillehay of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and colleagues (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1156533). Samples were found in remains of hearths and others had been chewed into clumps,…
