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New research in lowland South America is beginning to reveal a diversity of complex and unique cultural trajectories in a region that was long-considered marginal with respect to Andean and Mesoamerican civilizations. This paper summarizes new archaeological, paleoecological, and archaebotanical data from the Los Ajos site, southeastern Uruguay, showing that a changing and increasingly drier mid-Holocene climate was associated with significant cultural transformations, including early village formation, the adoption of a mixed economy, and the construction of the earliest public architecture known for the area. Collectively, this evidence indicates an early and unexpected development of social complexity that had not heretofore been recorded in this area of South America. Human-environment interactions, social processes related to the development of early village life, and the role of early public architecture are discussed with reference to the emergence of early Formative communities in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]