Around 11 kyr, modern Homo sapiens had established themselves as the major big game hunters in the Americas. The earliest testimonies to these increase capacities are the Clovis points, named after Clovis, New Mexico, where they were discovered in the early 1920s. They were characterized by finely crafted bifacial stone tools that were grooved at the stem to accommodate a wooden shaft. The Clovis culture then evolved into the Folsom culture, named after the Folsom bison kill site discovered in 1926 near Lindenmeier, Colorado. Folsom points boasted finer and more careful workmanship, as well as a groove that covered one whole face of the projectile point.

The initiative for the transition to a farming lifestyle was the loss of lush grasslands and the extinction of great numbers of large mammals triggered by a warming and drying trend at the end of the Pleistocene epoch. It should be remembered that early Mesoamericans depended as much upon wild plants as big game. Most archaeologists and anthropologists have identified three major trends in the shift to farming lifestyle: (1) wild-food production, (2) cultivation, and (3) agriculture.

In wild-food production, selective harvesting of larger and more worthwhile plants would have helped these favorable mutants gain a selective advantage over their fellows. Other, more conscious ways include occasional tending, weeding, and discouraging other consumers. As time progressed and the desirability of a certain plant increased, Mesoamericans could lower gathering time and increase productivity by transplanting it nearer to their camps. The presence of concentrated, productive food sources near their camp would also encourage sedentism and lead to the transplantation of other desirable plants.

Evidence points to the beginning of the agricultural revolution at around 7000 B.C.E., when farmers in the Tehuacan Valley began the cultivation of wild, fruit-bearing plants. Cultivation is an extension and intensification of the hunter-gatherer wild-food production methods, where the soil is manually prepared and the crop planted, tended to, and harvested on a regular basis. Among these are beans, chili peppers, grain amaranth, squash, pumpkins, cotton, and the ancestors of maize. Evidence of major transplantation and tending (as well as primitive irrigation) in the highlands is also available. For example, many plants such as avocado, cotton, cacao, maguey, and papaya were originally found in much moister environments.

       

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