Pre Columbian Fabrics and Accessories

Color, usually whitish, may be brown or black, especially in coarse types, and coarse wools have higher luster than fine types.
Single wool fibers can resist breakage when subjected to weights of 0.5 to 1 ounce (15 to 30 grams) and when stretched as much as 25 to 30 percent of their length. Unlike vegetable fibers, wool has a lower breaking strength when wet. The resilient fiber can return to its original length after limited stretching or compression, thus imparting to fabrics and garments the ability to retain shape, drape well, and resist wrinkling. Because crimp encourages fibers to cling together, even loosely twisted yarns are strong, and both crimp and resilience allow manufacture of open-structured yarns and fabrics that trap and retain heat-insulating air. The low density of wool allows manufacture of lightweight fabrics.

The panorama of the hunter/gatherer began to gradually change some 7,000 years ago. The most compelling transformation was a change from a predatory economy to economies based or agricultural, product the domestication of crops and animals. How the change from one type of economy to another took place is the topic of lively discussion. What is certain, is that for farming to have replaced gathering, there must have been a shift in climatic, demographic, and technological factors which acted jointly to create a different set of conditions.
As a matter of fact, the last ice age drew to a close some 7,000 years ago. The most relevant characteristics of that period were dramatically low temperatures and the concentration of enormous quantities of ice at the polar caps. The shoreline was one of the areas of the country most sensitive to these changes. There, the water level of the seas gradually increased, average temperatures climbed and the climate turned drier. This caused many of the coastal lands and tidal basins to be invaded by swampy mangroves, a resource that offered new possibilities to human societies.

The thick growth of mangroves creates a complex ecosystem capable of offering abundant quantities of  food. The leaves, on falling to the sea and decomposing through bacterial activity, are food source that attracts a multitude of small species provides suitable conditions for abundant quantities of larger fish and birds, and naturally, man. The resources, furnished by the stands of mangrove, were so abundant that they helped some hunting/gathering societies establish more permanent settlements. Enormous accumulations of seashells, bird and animal bones, called "Concheros" in the vernacular, supply evidence of the huge interest some groups had in taking advantage of these resources created on some parts of the coast by climatic changes.
The fauna attracted by the mangrove furnished man with abundant protein, but not wild a balanced diet. The principal nutritional categories absent in these resources, such as calories, are plentiful in plants. Perhaps, this was the reason behind the coastal populations' increased consumption of vegetable resources, particularly manioc. This root crop's extraordinary resistance to drought and the ease with which large harvests can be reaped even from poor soils, presented tremendous advantages to the population. Cultivating manioc was further favored because it did not require complex systems of labor organization. Manioc, an integral part of root agriculture, implied little investment of time or labor.