Precontact
Evidence of human occupation of California dates from at least 17,000 BCE.
[1] Prior to European contact, California Indians had 500 distinct sub-tribes or groups, each consisting of 50 to 500 individual members.
[2] The size of California tribes today are small compared to tribes in other regions of the United States. Prior to contact with Europeans, the California region contained the highest native American population density north of what is now
Mexico.
[2] Because of the temperate climate and easy access to food sources, approximately one-third of all
Native Americans in the United States were living in California.
[6]
Early Native Californians were
hunter-gatherers, with seed collection becoming widespread around 9,000 BCE.
[2] Due to the local abundance of food, tribes never developed agriculture or
tilled the soil. Two early southern California cultural traditions include the
La Jolla Complex and the
Pauma Complex, both dating from ca. 60501000 BCE. From 3000 to 2000 BCE, regional diversity developed, with the peoples making fine-tuned adaptations to the local environments. Traits recognizable to historic tribes were established by approximately 500 BCE.
[7]
The indigenous people practiced various forms of
forest gardening in the forests, grasslands, mixed woodlands, and wetlands to ensure availability of food and medicine plants. They
controlled fire on a regional scale to create a low-intensity
fire ecology; this prevented larger, catastrophic fires and
sustained a low-density "wild" agriculture in loose rotation.
[8][9][10][11] By burning underbrush and grass, the natives revitalized patches of land and provided fresh shoots to attract food animals. A form of
fire-stick farming was used to clear areas of old growth to encourage new in a repeated cycle; a primitive
permaculture.
[10]
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