4 
SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 146 
forms such as elephant and horse to have lived under climatic condi- 
tions that were much the same as they are today. If this be true, and it 
is a startling thought, how does the lack of Pleistocene fauna from 
Frightful Cave (fig. 3) in Coahuila (Taylor, 1956) fit into the pic- 
ture? Had the elephant and other Pleistocene megafauna disappeared 
from north and central Coahuila earlier than in northwestern Chi- 
huahua, where both horse and bison have recently been found ? ( Mar- 
tin etal., 1961, pp. 60-61.) 
It would appear as though the culture of the desert dwellers was 
widespread throughout northern Mexico in both time and space. 
This manifestation of nonsedentary seasonal gatherers appears to be 
related to the Cochise desert culture and is recognized as existing 
from the northwestern corner of the United States to the valley of 
Mexico, and from the Rockies to the Pacific Ocean (Jennings et al., 
1956). 
These ancient nomads lived in the open or on occasion in caves or 
shelters. Their economy was one that permitted maximum use of the 
environment without causing permanent injury to the ecological bal- 
ance. Pottery has not been associated with this horizon; however, 
basketry, netting, matting, fur cloth, tumplines, fiber sandals, as well 
as the atlatl, hardwood foreshafts and milling stones, cobble manos, 
percussion chipped tools, and numerous other artifacts have been 
found. 
It is difficult to date the inception of the desert culture because 
many of the indigenes were living at this level when first visited by 
the Spanish. In northern Coahuila a cultural sequence containing 
much of the same material culture appears to run from 6000 B.C. 
to Spanish contact times. However, where dating controls are present 
it can be said that the old desert culture was found in Baja California 
(Massey and Osborne, 1961), along the northern Sonora coast (Fay, 
1959), where it was termed the Peralta Complex and was thought 
to be comparable to the San Pedro stage of the Cochise continuum, as 
well as in the Mayo River drainage of southern Sonora (Ekholm, 
1940). The Los Caracoles Culture of Durango (Lister, 1955, p. 54; 
Kelley and Winters, 1960, pp. 547-561) appears to be part of the 
desert complex. Similar manifestations are reported from the caves 
of northwestern Chihuahua (Lister et al., 1958, p. 112; Ascher and 
Clune, 1960, pp. 270-274), as well as from the lake regions of Bol- 
son de Mapimi in southern Chihuahua (Marrs, 1948). 
In the Coahuila lake country the caves of La Paila and Candelaria 
have produced abundant evidence of the desert culture (Aveleyra et 
