11000 BC to 1470

Hands on the rock

People reach the far south of the Americas more than twelve thousand years ago. In Patagonia, at the Cueva de las Manos, hunters stencil hundreds of hands on the rock walls, the oldest about nine thousand years ago. Much later, farming peoples of the Andean northwest, such as the Diaguita, grow maize and herd llamas, while Guarani farmers settle the forests of the northeast.