The Southern Zone was the setting for the development of a hunter-gatherer culture with a strong maritime emphasis that dates back as early as 8000 B.C.These groups not only extracted large numbers of mollusks but also developed certain fishing technologies that were unknown—or not nearly as popular—in other lands. One such technology was their use of nets to trap fish in shallow waters, which has been inferred from the many stone weights of different shapes and sizes they left behind, the nets having disintegrated over time.
These groups also took advantage of large tidal variations, especially in the extreme south, with a simple but very efficient technology—fishing weirs, which were stone walled enclosures into which fish swam at high tide then remained trapped when the tide went out. This technology was still being widely used in colonial times among communities on the island of Chiloé.