When looking back at the Patagonian natives, one imagines that they lived in a period of stability over the 15,000 years that they reigned supreme in southern South America until the arrival of the Europeans (explorers, navigators, conquistadors, missionaries, soldiers, slave hunters, sealers, settlers, etc.)
European discovery brought diseases that were deadly to the Patagonians. Measles, the flu, smallpox, wiped out 90 to 95% of the American Natives in the century that followed discovery in 1492. Patagonia though isolated also suffered.
Scourges like alcohol, Spanish "malocas" hunting natives to enslave them to work in Chilean mines also hit the Patagonains.
But in the past, these natives also suffered from natural disasters.
Early Arrival of Humans to Tierra del Fuego
The dates have been slowly moving further back, accepting older dates. Now it is accepted that the first hunter-gatherers settled on the northern tip of Tierra del Fuego around 11,000 years ago. The site at Tres Arroyos has dates ranging from 11,880 to 10,600 BP. In those days the sea level was far lower, and the Strait of Magellan hadn't flooded. The Island was linked to the mainland.
Fuegians hunted the Amerian horse, mylodon sloths, the guanaco, and a dog species (Dusicyon avus), among other prey. They also lived on the now submerged continental shelf. Later, around 9,240 years ago, the glaciers melted, retreated, and sea levels rose confining them on the Island.
Different studies have found hints that these people and their culture changed over the millennia, suggesting extinction, and repopulation events.
One paper published in Science magazine (Source) found that natives using canoes along the Pacific Ocean in what is now Chile, didn't advance further south than 32° S. Between 13,000 and 8,500 years ago, they kept north of this latitude. The first seafaring Fuegians in Southern Patagonia (52°S) are those whose remains were found at Punta Santa Ana, Chile, dated at 7,440 cal BP.
These people discovered navigation on their own, adapting from terrestrial hunter-gatherers to maritime people. They exploited terrestrial resources and used the trees in the area (at that time) to build their canoes.
But what moved landlubber natives to become seafaring ones?
Volcanic Eruption and a move to the sea
There was a catastrophic event that can be followed by the use of green obsidian, a sharp volcanic glass used in stone tools. This material is believed to have come from Otway Sound in Chile. It was common and traded widely by the terrestrial natives between 9,500 and 7,700 BP, and has been found at ancient sites in Pali Aike and Fell Cave, 200 km distant from Otway Sound. But then, after 7,700 it vanishes. Obsidian from Otway and other sites abruptly disappeared from the Patagonian sites.
The natives were affected by the eruption of Hudson volcano, located in Chile (46°S - see it in Google maps) This eruption known as H1 took place around 7,750 years ago. It spewed forth 18 km3 (4.3 cu. mi.) of tephra, and covered most of Southern Patagonia with a thick layer of volcanic ash that ranged from 4 cm (1.5 in.) in Otway to more than 20 cm (8 in.) in Tierra del Fuego.
The ash destroyed the plants, grasslands and the animals that fed on them. The human food-chain was disrupeted. The paper reports that the eruption "may have actually extinguished this culture completely. However, it was unlikely to have affected marine species. We propose that this volcanic eruption was a significant trigger to the development of the maritime population from the older terrestrial hunter–gatherers."
A 2020 paper published in Nature, agrees, stating that around 6,700 BP there was a move to the sea with the adoption of canoes and harpoons and the settlement of the shores of the islands of the region.
It too noted that green obidian was no longer used and suggests it reflects " a loss of cultural knowledge about the location of the source of this raw material, potentially due to arrival of new people unfamiliar with the landscape." A population that replaced the older one. It also noted that the tools used changed with the introduction of "large bifacial lithic projectile points of different materials" in a later period (from 5,500 to 3,100 BP).
Two thousand years ago there was another change. The boleadoras (stone spheres seathed in hide and strapped to leather ropes used as throwing weapons to tangle the legs of animals like guanacos and rheas) were dropped and replaced with spears. Stone projectiles adopted different shapes: pedunculated around 2,000 BP. Even smaller ones were used around 900 BP suggesting the appearance of the bow and arrow.
The authors support the notion that the seafaring know-how was developed and invented it locally in Tierra del Fuego and not to a large-scale immigration into the region. Later around 5,500 BP there was an inflow of people from the northwest that replaced the Punta Santa Ana people. They are responsible for the change in stone tools (biface). Then, around 4,700 to 2,000 BP another wave brought the bow and arrow, and the languages spoken in North, Central, and South Patagonia (Tehuelche, Selk'nam, Aoniken, Teushen).
A 2022 paper describes the catastrophic H1 Hudson volcano eruption. It was about 5 times worse than the 1991 Hudson eruption that blew 3-4 km3 of ash (0.84 cu. mi.) and eighteen times greater than the 1980 Mount St Helen's eruption (1 km3 or 0.24 cu. mi.) St Helen's was equivalent to 27,000 Hiroshima atom bonmbs. Below is a map from this paper:
The author, Franklin, states that "the 7750-Hudson volcano is suspected to ‘have killed all the terrestrial hunter-gatherer population on Tierra del Fuego, which had been isolated since the opening of the Strait of Magellan at ~9240 cal YBP, since no evidence occurs for their existence until more than 1000 years after [its] eruption’ and ‘… it may have devastated for an extended time period the flora and fauna supporting the local terrestrial hunter-gatherers in this area, particularly in Tierra del Fuego …’"
The author adds that humans recolonized the island of Tierra del Fuego between 7,440 and 6,700 BP. They used bark canoes which were resilient, large and safe for open ocean navigation. Tree trunk canoes were unstable and difficult to maneouver, and coracle-like rafts used by Aonikenk Tehuelche in Patagonia were not seaworthy enough to cross the Strait of Magellan.
Franklin says that all large animals died out in Tierra del Fuego, a few rodents and lizards survived underground. The natives when they returned brought the Guanaco and fox with them, one for food, the other as their canine companion. Far-fetched? perhaps.
Closing Comments
These articles imply that: The original Fuegians that reached the island 12,000 years ago died out with the Hudson eruption 7,750 BP. They were replaced by people who moved south into a vacant patagonia, perhaps following guanaco and rhea who also repopulated the region several hundred years later. Possibly not all of the original inhabitants died (they adapted to catch seals, whales, fish) and somehow survived, evolving into the historic Alakaluf and Yamana (Yagans). Some retained the terrestrial culture (Selk'nam and Haush). Later groups reached the region with new technologies and gene inflow.
The myth of the ancient Tachwüll dwarves or "first men" who were destroyed by a volcanic eruption may have come from the H1 eruption.
Perhaps a story told by the Tehuelche chief Kánkel to Welsh explorer ap Iwan in the late 1800s backs this notion; the native chief had said that long ago his ancestors were remiss to do something that their God had asked them to do, so it decided to punish them and made “all their horses go into the ground through a volcano’s crater, and since then a petrified horse skull marks this place." This event happened at Ashpaik (46°39’ S, 70°47’ W), some 30 km (18 mi.) southeast of Lake Buenos Aires, at Cerro Volcán (Volcano Hill). Not too far from Hudson Volcano. According to Musters who visited this place in 1870, it was at this “God’s Hill” that Tehuelche’s “Great Spirit” dispersed the animals he had created in all directions.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall ©
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