Salar de Punta Negra

Salar de Punta Negra is a saltpan in the Antofagasta Region of Chile with a surface area of about 230 square kilometres (89 sq mi).

At the beginning of the Holocene era, the area was wetter than today, although the idea that Salar de Punta Negra once contained a permanent lake has been disproven.

Early humans moved into the area to exploit the wetlands and left traces in the form of projectile points and archeological sites.

The Salar de Punta Negra lies in the eastern Antofagasta Region of Chile, which is an important source of copper and nitrate for the country.

[2] The name refers to a black lava flow on the eastern side of Salar de Punta Negra that was erupted during the Late Pleistocene.

[8] Salar de Punta Negra lies at the centre of a converging drainage network[9] and is surrounded by a bajada which often becomes steep where it meets the playa and is itself crisscrossed by channels that originate in dry valleys at the top of the bayada.

Likewise, typical fine sediments associated with water are only found on the eastern side of Salar de Punta Negra, where springs are active.

The absence of a lake in Salar de Punta Negra is consistent with the fact that paleolakes with clear shorelines in the region only occur at elevations of over 3,500 metres (11,500 ft).

[18] There is virtually no vegetation close to Salar de Punta Negra today,[31] with the exception of small wetlands along its margins[32] which support some noctuid moths, including three novel species.

[35] In the past, conversely, wetlands existed at Salar de Punta Negra, including grasses, shrubs and sedges.

[36] The formation of the wetlands took place 15,900–13,800 and 12,700–9,700 years ago as part of two more general wet periods in the region, the Central Andean Pluvial Events (CAPE),[37] which were discovered at Salar de Punta Negra.

[40][41] The latest Pleistocene-early Holocene was also the time by which humans in South America had colonized all available spaces with various technological strategies;[42] in the case of the Atacama region, this included the then-existing wetlands.

[46] At the Pleistocene/Holocene sites of Salar de Punta Negra, furnaces have been found which feature camelid bones, various types of tools,[40] and projectile points.