By the middle Holocene — roughly 4,000 to 8,000 years ago — the lake had declined dramatically from its Pleistocene extent, and the Great Basin as a whole experienced a period of increased aridity.

These environmental changes required significant adaptive responses from the human populations of the region.

The aquatic resources that the lake had provided — fish, waterfowl, aquatic plants — became less abundant as the lake shrank.

The plant community of the basin changed as species composition shifted in response to the warmer, drier conditions.

The large game animals of the late Pleistocene — mammoths and horses — had gone extinct by the early Holocene, removing some of the largest food sources from the landscape.

The archaeological record of the Great Basin through the Holocene documents the successive adaptations of human populations to these changing conditions.