South America Minor (49,293–28,578 BCE)

South America Minor includes southern Chile (incl. Central Valley), southern Argentina (Patagonia south of the Río Negro/Río Grande), Tierra del Fuego, Falkland/Malvinas, Juan Fernández.

Anchors: Patagonian steppe, Andean icefields, Strait of Magellan–Beagle Channel, Fuegian archipelago, Pacific fjords, Atlantic shelf banks.

Geographic & Environmental Context

• Cordilleran ice sheets dominated the southern Andes; outlet glaciers sculpted fjords and moraines.

• Patagonian steppe: cold, windy; periglacial dunes/loess.

• Sea-level lowstand exposed broad Atlantic shelves and expanded Magellan–Beagle shorelines.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

• LGM: strong westerlies, low temperatures, aridity inland; permafrost/seasonal frost common on steppe.

Subsistence & Settlement

• Human occupation in this early window is unlikely; robust evidence appears much later (>14.5 ka at Monte Verde to the north).

• Productive kelp highway ecologies existed (shellfish, pinnipeds, seabirds), but sustained use likely post-LGM.

Technology & Material Culture — N/A (pre-human).

Movement & Interaction Corridors — N/A (pre-human).

Cultural & Symbolic Expressions — N/A.

Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

• Ecological scaffolding (kelp forests, shelf banks, guanaco steppe) set the later human adaptive palette.

Transition

• Deglaciation and shelf flooding will open fjord/archipelago routes, enabling the well-documented Holocene maritime foragers of the southern cone.