The first tribes of Asian hunters arrived in America through the Strait of Bering approximately 30,000 years ago, while their arrival in the present Argentine territory is considered the result of internal migrations that took place around 18,000 years ago.

The indigenous communities developed different styles of life related mainly to the geographical region:
The pampas, querandíes, tehuelches, yamanas and onas were hunters and wild fruit gatherers.
The omaguacas, tilcaras, diaguitas, huarpes, comechingones and sanavirones
were farmers.

These populations settled basically in two regions:

Mountains: the oldest testimonies at present are the traces of population groups that go back to 8,000 years ago in Ayamapatín (Province of Córdoba) and Inti Huasi (Province of San Luis). There are also traces of other antique culture of populations that worked with stone and ceramics in Tafí (Province of Tucumán). The civilization of La Aguada (territory comprised by the Provinces of San Juan, La Rioja and Catamarca) is more recent, which development dates back to the years 800 to 650 where their inhabitants cultivated corn and worked with bronze.
Plains: there are traces of a population group in Tandil (Province de Buenos Aires), of approximately 6,000 years ago, which inhabitants worked on stone and ceramics.
In the Littoral, similar traces account for the so–called Culture of the High Paraná, of the same period.
The southern area and the Tierra del Fuego channels are considered the place where the first people arrived at around 6,000 years ago, who lived in semi–underground circular huts. They hunted, fished and used boats and harpoons to catch marine mammals and molluscs.

Many of these communities left traces such as ruins of cities, pieces of ceramics, handcrafts made of stone or fantastic paintings on rocks.
In the different regions of our country, such as the Norwest, Littoral and Patagonia there are traditions still alive, beauty handcraft (knitting, ceramics, basketry), festivities and rites that help us go deeper into our roots.

This region was inhabited by the following aboriginal communities: abipones, mbayaes, payaguaes, mocovíes, tobas, pilagaes, matacos/wichis and chiriguanos.

Guaycurúes: it is the name given to the group of people of patagónido origin that inhabited the immense land of Chaco, divided into:
abipones, mbayaes, payaguaes, mocovíes, tobas and pilagáes. From these groups only the mocovíes, the tobas and the pilagáes survive in Chaco and Formosa.
They basically were wild fruit gatherers and hunters when it was not the fishing season.

Matacos/Wichis: were called “matacos” by the Spanish colonisers. They are of patagónido race with andean and brasílido influence.
Their economy was basically based on fruit gathering and fishing. They lived in hemispheric dome huts made of branches and straw with no doors. They ate meat, generally barbecued, dried fish, algarroba fruit and beans.
The great vice they had was tobacco that they smoked in pipes made of wood or baked mud.

Chiriguanos: they arrived in he Salta–Chaco region by mid 1500, sharing the same territory with the former Andean populations and adopted that existing culture that was stronger and more sophisticated.
Their economic organisation was mainly based on agriculture. They cultivated corn, beans, pumpkins, manioc, sorghum, melon and some fruit.

At the beginning the old Pampas moved all across this region. They were composed by the Querandíes and the Taluhet who inhabited the humid steppe and the Diuihet who lived on the dry steppe.

Querandíes:
Upon the foundation of the city of Buenos Aires the Spanish colonisers had to deal with these indigenous populations. They occupied an area from the south of Santa Fe, at the north, up to the bottom of Sierras Grandes, at the west, and all the area of the north of the province of Buenos Aires up to the Salado river at the south.
They were robust, dark skinned, and they lived organised in groups that obeyed chiefs and “caciques”. They were nomad hunters and fishers that travelled when the hunting season was favourable. They developed special weapons as the “boleadoras”. Their basic diet consisted of fish, huemul (Andean deer), roots, fruit and lobster. The primitive Pampas’ shelter was a typical leather covering that remained being used in the subsequent centuries.
In the 16th. Century the Mapuches, of trans–Andean origin, initiated their movement towards the Argentine Patagonia and steadily started to transmit their culture to the local tribes that since that situation changed their language and beliefs.
Towards the end of the 19th. Century, the region was only inhabited by Araucan origin populations. The Araucanisation was a process derived from the Spanish pressure over the Chilean indians who had been expelled from the other side of the Cordillera.

This region was inhabited by the Charrúas and Guaraníes.

Kaingang (men of the forest): This group of people was the one the colonisers found when they arrived in the Mesopotamia. Shortly after, it disappeared as an ethnic entity, being absorbed by the Charrúas and the Guaraníes. Their economic organization was based on wild fruit gathering, hunting and fishing. They lived in shelters made of braided vegetal fibres that were knitted to form a saddle–roof hut, with no walls. The groups of this type of constructions formed populations that were governed by a “cacique”.

Guaraníes (warriors): They lived in villages, in the open areas of the forest and constituted a true tribal unit for being economically independent from each other, and thus self–sufficient. The general custom was monogamy. The relationships were not very stable and separation was common. They were basically farmers, families had an exclusive lot of land in the community plantations and every wife had a personal area for cultivation. They were deeply religious and with a high degree of spirituality. The “Shamán” or “Page” had supernatural powers and a director role– he was the conductor of his population over all the community actions.

There were five aboriginal cultures in this region: Diaguitas, Omaguacas (Humahuacas), Atacamas, Chiriguanos and Lule–Vilelas.

Diaguito–Calchaquí Culture: it is the most representative of the old aboriginal inhabitants of North–western Argentina and conforms the most complex and numerous population. This group is integrated by three different groups that are known as:
Pulares, in Salta Vallley;
Calchaquíes, in Calchaquí and Yocavil valleys –Salta– in Tucumán and Catamarca; and
Diaguitas in La Rioja.
Their components were of Andean race and they shared a common language called “caca” or “cacán”.
It was a population of sedentary farmers, who developed artificial irrigation by means of channels and cultivation tracks for their main products: corn, pumpkin and beans. They bred “llama” (a mammal with softly woolly hair, closely related to lamoids) from which they used their wool for knitting and to carry burdens. They also picked fruit such as those from carob and “chañar”, that were stored in big amounts.
They had a strong hierarchical structure, probably hereditary, with chiefs that could control many communities. The monogamous family was the vital core of the community, being the chiefs or “caciques” the only polygamous.
They adored the sun, thunder and lightening. They celebrated rituals for lands fertility and funerals were elaborated as an expression of the cult for the dead, as a crucial transit in their culture life cycle.
Their art, many times oriented to religious matters, is the most elaborated in our aborigine cultures; not only in ceramics but in metallurgy, as well.

Different indigenous races inhabited the Patagonia thousands of years before the Spanish colonisation arrived. Nowadays there only remain funerary storage rooms, caverns, paintings on stones and places where they used to work.

Patagones of the North (Patagonia plateau)
This area was inhabited by two indigenous groups, very different from one another. The Tehuelches and the Mapuches.

The Tehuelches inhabited the area from the Colorado river to the Magallanes channels, divided into various groups, on a land of strong winds and very cold winters with scarce water what did not allow them to cultivate the land. They were nomad, and hunted guanacos and ostriches. They spoke the ken group language, they were robust, and they had a narrow head and elongated face.

Patagones of the South (Tierra del Fuego)
Onas: They lived in Tierra del Fuego. They belong also to the Tehuelches group. They were very good at guanaco hunting that was the base of their economy. They had no chiefs or “caciques”, but only an elite integrated by the “chamanes”, wise people and prophets that had privileges and social recognition.

Yámanas and Alcaluf: They lived along the coasts and isles of Tierra del Fuego channels. These peoples were similar both, for their physical characteristics and their cultural aspects but different in the linguistic aspect. They lived in huts made of branches that had an excavation in the centre and fed from sea products – mollusc, mussel, crayfish, fish – and fished marine animals. They wore seal or nutria skin cloak.

The Comechingones, the Sanavirones, the Puelches and the Pehuenches lived in the region comprised by the central hills and Cuyo.

Comechingones: they lived in the mountain chain shared by the provinces of Córdoba and San Luis. They formed small independent groups, governed by “caciques” (chiefs ).
They were one of the aborigine populations with most pictographic richness and left paintings and engravings in the interior of innumerable caverns.

Sanavirones: they lived in huge houses harbouring many families, built with vegetables and arranged in small groups circled by thistle and other thorny and prickly vegetation used for protection. They were farmers and also gathered wild fruit, fished and hunted.

Pehuenches: they lived in the south of Mendoza and the Andean region of Neuquén. Their basic food was the pine kernel from which they extracted flour to bake bread and to prepare an alcoholic beverage similar to the “chicha”, once fermented.

Puelches: they lived in the northern area of Mendoza. In Araucanian language the word means "people from the east". Their principal diet was based on the “algarroba” and for that they were called "algarroberos".

Puelches and Pehuenches: they were guanaco and ostrich hunters and seeds pickers. After the arrival of the Spanish colonisation they started to eat horses, as well.
They lived in shelters made of animal leather tightened with branches located near the woods to have fruit at hand. They wore clothes made of leather with feathers, copper or silver rings and they painted their faces, arms and legs. Each type of dressing had a meaning: mourning, war or peace.