The semi-arid north was home to the earliest marine hunter-gatherers in Chilean territory, and those groups appeared at virtually the same time as the last hunters of the megafauna finally disappeared. One of their original settlements has been found at Punta Ñagué, north of the city of Los Vilos, and dated at around 11,000 B.C. They share some cultural traitswith other early Pacific coast groups, raising the possibility that this way of life may have been present in the Americas since it was first settled.
At first these groups had an economy based on gathering mollusks and hunting marine mammals, but around 4000 B.C. they began to gradually incorporate fishing, especially in the northernmost sector of the territory, as the shell fishhook became part of their technological repertoire. Descendants of these early cultures would continue practicing this way of life as late as the 18th century, when they were known as the Changos and inhabited virtually the entire Chilean coast between Arica and La Serena.