Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino

Cultures > Center > Hunter Gatherers of Central Chile

Economía

These highly mobile groups had a meat-based diet. Their prey included guanaco, huemul, fox, birds and rodents, which they hunted with stone-pointed darts. As their hunting techniques evolved, their hunting instruments also changed to some degree. They also began to focus more on gathering wild plants, which they ground up in stone mortars, which they carried with them from place to place. On the coast they extracted marine resources—fishing ocean species, collecting mollusks and hunting sea birds and sea lions.