The Tepexpan Tangle: How a Contaminated Skeleton Rewrote Prehistory—Twice
The Tepexpan remains, discovered in 1947, sparked decades of debate. Initially believed to be a 10,000-year-old man, later studies suggested a 2,000-year-old woman due to contamination. Uranium dating eventually revealed the remains to be a 6,000-year-old man.
In the sun-baked plains of Acolman, where the ghosts of mammoths once thundered and ancient lakes shimmered under Pleistocene skies, lies a tale as tangled as a pre-Columbian glyph. It begins with bones—bones that sparked a century-spanning soap opera of science, scandal, and one fossil’s existential crisis.
On February 22, 1947, Helmut de Terra, a man with a name as sturdy as a pickaxe, unearthed what he believed to be Mexico’s oldest celebrity: Tepexpan Man. Initial carbon dating declared the fossil a venerable 10,000 years old, a relic of Ice Age wanderers. Cue confetti! Archaeology textbooks trembled with excitement.
