4. Our past and present beliefs on the History of the Sea Nomads of Tierra del Fuego. Concepts from the 17th to the 21 centuries.

PIANA, E.L.

La cirumpolaridad como fenómeno sociocultural.

xx

Año: 2010; p. 217 - 252

Between the 18th and the first half of the 20th centuries three main concepts dominated the picture on the Magellan-Fuegian sea nomads: they were primitive, cornered in Tierra del Fuego, and had recently settled the region These conclusions rooted on historical and ethnographical information and repeatedly concluded in tautological and unverifiable presentations. By the late 20th century new archaeological data lead to discard those previous concepts. In today's panorama the way of life based on the exploitation of coastal resources in the Beagle Channel region would have begun around 6500 14C years B. P. and not much earlier. The later process is seen as adaptive and not as stagnation. The system was able to maintain equilibrium until the early nineteenth century due to an energy subsidy generated in a much larger area than the actually foraged one. In that century, the balance would have been broken by overhunting of seals by Europeans, Americans and Creole. The sea nomads had no opportunity to retrofit their system to the new environmental state: the almost extinction was immediate