ABSTRACT
In the New World, three types of areas fall within deficiencies in the environment: the Pacific Coasts, which were too dry or too wet for primitive agriculture, but which provided a reliable supply of wild foods; the Marginal Areas, where wild subsistence resources were fewer and more scattered; and the Arctic, the most hostile habitat to which mankind has ever made a successful adaptation. The environmental limitations on the food supply held both population concentration and sedentariness to minimal levels in such regions, creating a social context that prevented adoption of advanced traits even if they became known. Although the cultural configurations in each area have distinctive characteristics that stem from adaptation to their specific environments, a general similarity links them not only with one another but with the hunters and gatherers who settled the hemisphere and were its only inhabitants throughout most of the prehistoric period.
