At the time of the European invasion into South America, the southern cone presents at first sight a confusing array of different and shifting ethnic and social groups. This chapter discusses the ecological complementarity of different peoples, each in a particular environment, or establishing settlements in different niches; many of them nomadic, some transhumant, and in some cases so specialized economically that their livelihood depended on a complex and far-reaching circulation of subsistence goods. The three cultural areas of the southern cone are: southern Andean agriculturists; lowland hunter-gatherers and cultivators of the Chaco, inter-fluvial and littoral regions; and hunters, gatherers and fishers of the Pampa, Patagonia and the southern Archipelago. Among the hunting societies, the social organization of the seafarers was egalitarian. The hunting, gathering and fishing peoples of the south had no products of interest to the Europeans and they could not be enticed off their lands by the colonizers by means of economic incentives.