In this talk, an overview of the status of the light scalar mesons in the context of the non linear chiral Lagrangian of references [1–3] is presented. The evidence for the existence of a scalar nonet below 1 GeV is reviewed, and it is shown that by introducing a scalar nonet an indirect way of probing the quark substructure of these scalars through the scalar mixing angle can be obtained. It is then reviewed that consistency of this non-linear chiral Lagrangian framework with the experimental data on &pgr;&pgr; and&pgr;Kscattering, as well as the decay&eegr;′→&eegr;&pgr;&pgr;,results in a range for the mixing angle which indicates that the quark substructure of these light scalars are closer to a four quark picture. ©1999 American Institute of Physics.