The history of human habitation in the Andean region of South America stretches from circa 15,000 BCE to the present day. Stretching for 7,000 km (4,300 mi) long, the region encompasses mountainous, tropical and desert environments. This colonisation and habitation of the region has been affected by its unique geography and climate, leading to the development of unique cultural and socn.
After the first humans — who were then arranged into hunter-gatherer tribal groups — arrived in South America via the Isthmus of Panama, they spread out across the continent, with the earliest evidence for settlement in the Andean region dating to circa 15,000 BCE, in what archaeologists call the Lithic Period. In the ensuing Andean preceramic period, plants began to be widely cultivated, and first complex society, Caral-Supe civilization, emerged at 3500 BC, and lasted until 1800 BC. Also, distinct religious centres emerged, such as the Kotosh Religious Tradition in the highlands.
This was followed by the Ceramic Period. Various complex societies developed at this time, such as Chavín culture, lasting from 900 BC to 200 BC, Paracas culture, lasting from 800 BC to 200 BC, its successor Nazca culture, lasting from 200 BC to 800, the Moche civilisation, lasting from 100 to 700, Wari and Tiwanaku Empires, with both lasting from 600 to 1000, and Chimor, lasting from 900 to 1470. In later periods, much of the Andean region was conquered by the indigenous Incas, who in 1438 founded the largest empire that the Americas had ever seen, named Tahuantinsuyu, but usually called Inca Empire. The Inca governed their empire from the capital city of Cuzco, administering it along traditional Andean lines. Inca Empire rose from Kingdom of Cuzco, founded around 1230.
In the 16th century, Spanish colonisers from Europe arrived in the Andes, eventually subjugating the indigenous kingdoms and incorporating the Andean region into the Spanish Empire. In the 19th century, a rising tide of anti-imperialist nationalism that was sweeping all of South America led rebel armies to overthrow Spanish rule. The Andean region was subsequently divided into a number of new states, Peru, Chile, Bolivia and Ecuador. The 20th century saw the growing influence of the United States in the region, which was increasingly exploited for its natural gas supplies. This in turn led to the rise of a number of anti-imperialist and socialist movements to oppose U.S. and multinational involvement in Andean South America.
Lithic Period: c.15,000 BCE—3500 BCE
The earliest period in which humans inhabited the Andean region was the Lithic period, sometimes alternately called the Early Archaic period. It was a period characterised by the use of stone tools, or lithics, as the main form of technology, and a hunter-gatherer mode of existence.
First colonisation
After the evolution of anatomically modern humans in East Africa circa 200,000 years ago, the species spread across the African continent and into Europe and Asia. It was from the Bering land bridge between Siberia in Northeast Asia and Alaska in north-western North America that humans first crossed into the Americas. From there, vanguards of human groups headed south, colonising the rest of the continent before reaching the Isthmus of Panama and crossing into the continent of South America. Although there had been four biologically distinct genetic human populations in North America, as has been identified by DNA analysis, only one of these populations, that known as the Paleo-Indians, pushed as far south as Mesoamerica and South America, meaning that the indigenous inhabitants of that latter continent were genetically homogenous.
Comparative analysis of indigenous religious beliefs across South America have led academics to suspect that the first Paleo-Indian colonists of the continent would have believed in a multi-layered universe in which the Earth was suspended between a celestial outer sphere and a cavernous inner sphere. There would have been strong taboos against incest, something that would have prevented inbreeding (a particular problem amongst the genetic homogeneity of the Indigenous South Americans), and instead marriage was controlled by social conventions, such as the development of moiety systems of societal duality.