The skies were thick with migratory birds in season.

The people who lived in this landscape knew it intimately.

They knew where the deer bedded in summer, where the fish congregated in shallow pools, where the prickly pear was sweetest in late summer, where the underground water emerged as springs and seeps that provided reliable drinking water even in drought years.

This knowledge — accumulated over generations and transmitted through teaching and example — was the most valuable asset the Early Archaic Texans possessed.

It was knowledge that would have been lost, catastrophically, if a community were disrupted or displaced.