558 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1960 



[14], the El Jobo points of Venezuela [15], the Aympitin mdustry of 

 the Andes and southern South America [16], and the Magellan I cul- 

 ture of the Straits [IT] give the geographical range of the early 

 big-game-hunting societies. 



The fate of the big-game-hunting pattern is better known than its 

 beginnings. After 7000 B.C. and the glacial retreats, there was a 

 shrinkage of the total territory in which the big herbivores could be 

 hunted. The intermontane basins and the range country of western 

 North America became more arid, and a similar climatic shift took 

 place in southern South America. After 5000 B.C., with a still 

 greater increase in warmth and dryness, big-game hunting persisted 

 in the central zones of the old continental grasslands, such as the 

 North American plains and the Argentine pampas. In these areas a 

 modified huntmg pattern, based, respectively, on the buffalo and the 

 guanaco, continued into later times. Elsewhere, populations of 

 hmiters probably were forced into new environmental situations and 

 new subsistence habits. 



LATER FOOD COLLECTING AND HUNTING 



These new subsistence patterns can best be described as food col- 

 lecting. They are differentiated from the possible earlier food- 

 gathering pattern in that they show specialization in the exploitation 

 of regional environments and much more effective teclmological equip- 

 ment. Although the taking of game is a means of subsistence in some 

 of these patterns, it is not the old big-game hunting of the Pleistocene. 

 The food collectors, for the most part, developed cultures of greater 

 material wealth, larger communities, and more stable settlements than 

 their predecessors. There were exceptions to this, particularly in 

 areas or regions of severe natural limitations and in the earlier periods 

 of the food-collecting patterns; but on the average, and certainly at 

 the optimum, these generalizations hold true [18]. 



Chronologically, most of the food-collecting patterns had their be- 

 ginnings in the span of time between about 6000 and 2000 B.C. There 

 were, however, exceptions to this, as in the North American Great 

 Basin, where the specialized collecting of wild seeds was well estab- 

 lished as early as 7Q00 or even 8000 B.C. [19]. As this is the same 

 general area where clues to the most ancient food gatherers are found, 

 it may be that there is a continuity in the Great Basin from the un- 

 specialized gathering of the early Pleistocene to the later food col- 

 lecting. According to this interpretation big-game hunting would be 

 only partially represented or would be absent in an intervening se- 

 quence position [20], This relationship is expressed in figure 1. 



This possibility of continuities betAveen the North American desert 

 food collectors and earlier resident cultures and populations brings 



