First Americans thrived on seaweed 19:00 08 May 2008 NewScientist.com news service Jeff Hecht How times have changed. Instead of large amounts of meat and spuds, some of the first Americans enjoyed healthy doses of seaweed. The evidence comes from 27 litres of material collected from the Monte Verde site in southern Chile, widely accepted as the oldest settlement in the Americas. Nine species of seaweed, carbon dated at 13,980 to 14,220 years old, played a major role in a diet that included land plants and animals. Tom Dillehay of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, argues that the seaweeds were...