The Regional Museum of Ica

This epoch of hunters and collectors is defined as 16,000 to 6,000 B.C., and the beginning of agriculture is defined as 6,000 to 2,000 B.C.

Editorial note from the original page: according to the author’s interpretation, gods or extraterrestrials came and taught humans agriculture, administration, and animal domestication.

The peopling of Andean America was initiated some 18,000 years ago by nomadic groups with an economy based on hunting extinct megafauna, including mastodons and saber-toothed animals, and gathering fruits and roots.

They used large, rough stone tools worked by percussion. By 10,000 B.C., megafauna was replaced by smaller species such as deer and camelids, and lithic technology developed into more elaborate and smaller tools, especially projectile points.

Except for some Paiján-type lithic points from the Pozo Santo vicinity, there is little evidence of early hunters and gatherers in the Ica region.

Text about arrowheads: the arrowheads were found at the archaeological site of Paiján in the region of Trujillo in northern Peru. They are similar to those shown by archaeologist F. Engel, who found the same type at Mastodonte in the region of Pisco in southern Peru.

6,000–2,000 B.C.

By 5,000 B.C., humans began to domesticate plants and animals, produce their own food, live in permanent villages, and make the first textiles from plant fibers such as cotton and reeds.

Lithic artifacts belonging to fishing and seafood-gathering groups were left 8,000 years ago in San Nicolas Bay south of Nasca.

At Pampa Santo Domingo, Paracas Bay, Frederic Engel discovered a fishing village with plant remains such as cotton and jiquima, an Andean tuber, indicating incipient agriculture. The Santo Domingo dwellings were very simple and similar to those found at Chilca around 5,000 B.C. Early farming has also been recorded in the Río Grande valley.