The emergence of plant-based economies have dominated evolutionary models of Middle and Late Holocene pre-Columbian societies. Comparatively, the use of aquatic resources and the circumstances for intensifying their exploitation, have received little attention. Here, Toso et al. shows a sharp decline in the chronology of non-ceramic sites from ca. 2200 years ago, possibly reflecting the dissolution of several nucleated groups into smaller social units, coinciding with substantial changes in coastal environments. The study reveals that millennial-scale resilient coastal societies are vulnerable to the societal and economic impacts of environmental thresholds.
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