Adapting to New Climates
The extinction of large mammals at the end of the Ice Age put pressure on the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. As the population grew and people traveled into new areas in search of food, they adapted their tools and technologies to the new environments they encountered. 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.

Adopting New Ways
Over time, population growth sometimes limited group movement and put a strain on natural resources. Hunter-gathers experimented with ways to get more out of their surroundings. Scientists call this discovery process intensification. Some of these groups took intensification in a new direction and began cultivating and selectively breeding wild plants and animals, a process called domestication.

In this way, cultural diversity developed across the Americas. Thousands of these unique hunter-gatherer societies thrived after the Ice Age. Select from a few of these groups below to learn more about how their hunting-gathering lifestyles changed over time.

	Peoples of Coastal California lived off the bounty of the oceans and learned, through intensification, how to eat the toxic acorn.
	Peoples of the Peruvian Andes Mountains adapted to life at high altitudes and domesticated the ancestors of alpacas and llamas.
	Peoples of the Eastern U.S. thrived in woodlands and prairies and learned how to cultivate wild plants.
	Peoples of the Mexican Tehuacán Valley flourished in lush lowlands and cultivated domesticated maize (corn), squash, chilies, and beans.