The Ancient Americas

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At the end of the Ice Age, climate change and the extinction of large mammals such as mammoths put pressure on the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. People traveled into different regions in search of food. Over time, they adapted their tools and technologies to the new environments they encountered, which led to cultural diversity.

Sometimes an area was so rich in resources that a group of people might choose to settle there for part of the year, forming a small village. To maximize resources as the population grew, these cultures experimented with ways to get more out of their surroundings, a process called intensification. Several groups even developed ways to domesticate wild plants and animals to enhance the food supply.

To learn more about a few of these innovative hunter-gatherer societies, select a culture below:

	Coastal California
	Peruvian Andes
	Eastern U.S.
	Tehuacán Valley

Continue to Costal California. >>