That 2021 Hamley paper is total guesswork, and the scientific community essentially laughed it out of the room…

Actual archaeologists and ecologists heavily criticised the study because it lacks the absolute bare minimum required to prove human settlement:

Zero Human Remains or Structures: In the cold, acidic peat bogs of the Falklands—which perfectly preserve organic material—they found zero human bones, zero teeth, no post holes, no tents and fuck all else.

The Fox Myth: The authors claimed the extinct fox (the warrah) had a marine diet because humans fed it. Peer researchers immediately pointed out that 19th-century museum specimens of the fox (when humans were actively trying to wipe them out) show the exact same diet. The fox was just scavenging naturally. Which makes sense as there were penguins everywhere and it was stealing from them

Natural Explanations: The bone piles have zero stone-tool butchery marks and were likely piled up by natural wind and wave erosion. The charcoal spikes were just natural brush fires during droughts. Nah must have been Argentinans doing it… Yep

If you want to see how badly peer researchers dismantled this paper, you can read the formal scientific rebuttals here:

Science Advances (Official Rebuttal): Comment on “Evidence of prehistoric human activity in the Falkland Islands” by researchers T.J. Clark, J. Newton, and E.D. Wakefield.  https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abo0928

There is even a reply on the same webpage that calls this article out on its assumptions, did you even read the article you provided?

It’s an incredibly weak paper trying to turn a few pieces of circumstantial ecological data into a political origin story. There is zero proof of a pre-European human footprint.

Nice try tho - Even if it was true, they clearly left well before the Europeans arrived so who fucking cares.

Copied text from your article, and the link I have submitted here

Edit: Well that shut them up.