Social organization
These hunter-gatherer groups had an egalitarian society with a division of labor by sex and age only. It is likely that these communities lived in small family bands that could move around easily, a necessity for their nomadic way of life. Towards the end of this period, lower rainfall in the Puna region led to increasing aridity, concentrating subsistence resources around lagoons, freshwater springs and foothill oases. As a result, these hunter-gatherer groups moved around less and less, which made it possible for them to live in larger groups, establishing semi-permanent encampments and villages, though still without any institutionalized social hierarchies.