History
Prehispanic Period (10, 500 B.C. to 1503 A.D.)
By: Alejandro Dever
Human occupation of Colombia starts at about 10,500 B.C. when hunter gatherers immigrated and lived off the wild horse, Mastodon and Cuvieronius. What today is the vibrant city of Bogotá, at the end on the last ice age the landscape of the Savannah of Bogotá was dominated by glaciers scouring from the surrounding mountains as vast grasslands fed giant herbivores. This was the home of the first humans to live in what today is Colombia. For a millennia they lived of the abundant natural resources and a wide range of climates available in the cordilleras of Colombia and its valleys, cconstantly moving from the lowlands to the highland savannahs and back.
Over time, as the ice age ended, the sea level rose and the Amazon grew back to its present state. The Caribbean planes were flooded by the melting glaciers and the present day coast on the Caribbean was formed. Almost 6000 years ago the first sedentary communities found their home along the coast of what today is Colombia. Small villages, of a few families each, exploited the rich marine resources of mangrove swamps, full of shellfish and crustaceans. They grew the first manioc and other edible plants in gardens in the forest, in addition to inventing ceramics. In the highlands, Maize is cultivated and preceramic villages dot the now warmer and more humid Northern Andean Cordilleras.
As time goes by, the population increases and agriculture settles in as the primary form of economic production. Around 1000 B.C. the first chiefdoms appear. Hierarchical societies with increasingly complex political and social structures proliferate and populate most of Northern South America. Larger villages emerge and more complex economies start to exploit a wider range of ecosystems. The high level of environmental diversity is exploited by these complex societies and increasingly sophisticated chiefdoms are formed.
Amongst the earliest complex Chiefdoms are the San Agustin, Tierradentro, Calima and Quimbaya. Goldwork is invented, so is bronze, silver and tumbaga (Copper and Gold alloy). The Alto Magdalena chiefdoms (San Agustin and Tierradentro) grow in population and start exploiting a wider range of ecosystems at around 300 A.D. They also build monumental burials and commence a process of agricultural intensification.
By 1000 A.D. These chiefdoms have reached very large populations. However they do not form cities but maintain a settlement pattern of nucleated villages and disperse agricultural households. This is a very different pattern to what is found in the Central Andean Region and Central America.
At around 900 A.D. The two most famous Colombian Chiefdoms consolidate themselves: The Tairona in the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta to the north of Colombia and the Muisca in the savannahs and valleys that stretch between Cundinamarca and Boyacá, in the Eastern Cordillera.
These two chiefdoms are thought to be the two most complex political systems of prehispanic Colombia. The Muisca reached a high level of sociopolitical complexity. However, their archaeological remains are not monumental. There were no Muisca cities although their numbers were considerable (800,000 in the 1530’s). The Muisca were conquered in 5 years of fighting and negotiations by Spanish and German expeditions 1533 to 1538. In 1538 Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada founded Santa Fé de Bogotá on the rocky slope 7 miles east of the palisade of the Muisca Chief of Bacatá. The Muisca survived until the late 1700's.
The Tairona are perhaps the most complex yet difficult to understand of the two societies. There is little clarity on whether these chiefdoms had a unified form of administration or if their political system was less centralized and more closely resembled a federation. However, the Tairona lived very different lives. Their communities seem to be specialized in a few set of products according to their location along the slopes of the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta. The lowland and coastal communities would have dedicated their economy to fishing, salt production and cotton production. As the elevation increased the dwellers of the densely populated Tairona villages constructed terraces that grew various types of palms, maize and manioc. At even higher elevations they grew potatoes and other tubers, squash, beans and other edible plants. This type of economy is frequently called Microvertical economy.
In 1525 the first successful Spanish city in South América was founded: Santa Marta. A few years later the Spanish invasion commences and for almost a century the Tairona fought and resisted until their defeat and cultural demise in 1601.
