San Diego

===Pre-colonial period===
[[File:Kumeyaay (cropped).jpg|thumb|left|upright|alt=Full length portrait of a man in his thirties wearing a long robe, woman and child visible behind him and dog to his left|The [[Kumeyaay people|Kumeyaay]], referred to by the Spanish as ''Diegueños'', have inhabited the area for thousands of years.]]

What has been referred to as the [[San Dieguito complex]] was established in the area at least 9,000 years ago.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Catalysts to complexity: late Holocene societies of the California coast |date=2002 |publisher=Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA |isbn=978-1-938770-67-8 |location=Los Angeles |pages=30 |oclc=745176510}}</ref> The [[Kumeyaay]] may have culturally evolved from this complex or migrated into the area around 1000 C.E.<ref>{{Cite book |last=High |first=Gary and Jerri-Ann Jacobs High Tech |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=w48Ivy4JCQ8C |title=San Diego Bay: A Story of Exploitation and Restoration |date=2007 |publisher=California Sea Grant College Program |isbn=978-1-888691-17-7 |language=en |quote=The Kumeyaay could have derived from the San Dieguito or they may have arrived from the desert around 1000 C.E.}}</ref> Archaeologist [[Malcolm Jennings Rogers|Malcolm Rogers]] hypothesized that the early cultures of San Diego were separate from the [[Kumeyaay]], yet this claim is disputed, with others noting that it does not account for [[Sociocultural evolution|cultural evolution]].<ref name=":3">{{Cite book |last1=Loveless |first1=R. |title=Ethical approaches to human remains: a global challenge in bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology |last2=Linton |first2=B. |date=2020 |publisher=Springer Nature |others=Kirsty Squires, David Errickson, Nicholas Márquez-Grant |isbn=978-3-030-32926-6 |edition= |location=Cham, Switzerland |pages=419–420 |chapter=Culturally Sensitive and Scientifically Sound |oclc=1135205590 |quote=He created a sequence of cultural periods... the San Dieguito Complex and La Jolla Complex... suggested that... [they were] mutually exclusive and not associated with the ancestral populations of the contemporary Kumeyaay. The problem with Rogers' hypothesis is that it did not account for cultural evolution... Rogers' theories were, and continue to be, a popular paradigm... At the end of his career, Rogers re-evaluated his original conclusions regarding the cultural groups he had established...}}</ref> Rogers later reevaluated his claims, yet they were influential in shaping historical tellings of early San Diego history.<ref name=":3" />

The Kumeyaay established villages scattered across the region, including the village of [[Kosa'aay]] which was the Kumeyaay village that the future settlement of San Diego would stem from in today's [[Old Town, San Diego|Old Town]].<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|last=Mogilner|first=Geoffrey|title=Cosoy: Birthplace of New California|url=https://sandiegohistory.org/journal/2016/april/cosoy-birthplace-new-california/|access-date=August 27, 2020|website=San Diego History Center {{!}} San Diego, CA {{!}} Our City, Our Story|language=en-US}}</ref><ref name=":2">{{Cite web|title=Kosa'aay (Cosoy) History|url=http://www.cosoy.org/History.html|access-date=August 27, 2020|website=www.cosoy.org}}</ref> The village of Kosa'aay was made up of thirty to forty families living in pyramid-shaped housing structures and was supported by a freshwater spring from the hillsides.<ref name=":1" />