There had been doubts that Ahlfeld's Nuevo Mundo lay in the Lípez area because it did not seem to be congruent to his descriptions according to which the mountain that he had visited was southwest of Potosí and immediately north of a village named Potoco.

The Nuevo Mundo volcanic field is a complex eruption center on the edge of the Los Frailes Plateau with a stratovolcano which is capped by cinder cones (mostly of ash and pumice).

[2] Later a highly explosive Plinian eruption produced an ash fall that extended over 200 km to the east, as far as Potosí.

While earlier eruption centers, such as the Khari Khari caldera, Wila Qullu, Kuntur Nasa, Villacolo, Cerro Wanapa Pampa created the Los Frailes Plateau, Nuevo Mundo overlaid those Los Frailes plateau deposits in the Holocene with huge ignimbrite deposits, which are mostly pyroclastic dacite and andesite.

The last eruption of Nuevo Mundo may have been observed by inhabitants of the Gran Chaco, leading to myths about a great darkness and the sky falling.