Ceramic and stone pipes have frequently been found at sites formerly occupied by Llolleo groups, which indicates that they may have used hallucinogenic substances in their social rituals….
Patrón de Asentamiento
Given their highly mobile way of life, the hunter gatherers of Central Chile did not establish villages, but for centuries in their seasonal nomadic circuits they used the…
Kai Kai y Treng Treng
…the mountaintops. Just when they could ascend no more, they heard a voice coming from deep within the earth, calling treng, treng, treng. It was the divine serpent come to…
Mapuche
…as we understand it). It is a way of conveying ideas, expressing emotions and communicating the interior self, and for this reason it does not matter whether one is a…
Story of the Forbidden Otter and the Great Flood
…stick, listen to what I was dreaming, that is why I am sending you to … do that… a coypu will come in and you shall kill it.” After he…
Economy
…Azapa, the local communities grew maize, beans, squash, jíquima and gourds that were sent to the Altiplano by llama caravan. In the Atacama, in contrast, the groups had an economy…
Selk’nam
…and other rituals. Such chants were repetitive and hypnotic, with strong, continuous inflexions that allowed the shaman to achieve a mental state of complete control over the body and energy….
The pictographs of Confluencia
…Typical of the Confluencia style are scenes that combine human and animal figures, usually camelids, in a single composition. These were painted in red and reddish-yellow, usually inside…
Language
The native tongue of the Atacameño people is kunza, though this language has been extinct for at least a century. Only a few traces of it remain, mainly…
The Spear-thrower
The spear thrower, also known as the atlatl, replaced the lance as the weapon of choice for hunting and personal defense among pre-Hispanic societies. These instruments were…
Pre-hispanic music of Chile
…a great deal. Music has always been an important part of ceremonial life (without music, rituals would virtually not exist), and the most interesting evidence of this comes to us…
The petroglyphs of Las Lizas
…figures in all, the most common ones being sharks, dolphins and tuna fish, with a smaller proportion of swordfish and a few other fish, namely sardines, tollo, sole and red…
The pictographs of El Médano
…most complex images depict scenes of human figures aboard tiny sea lion skin rafts throwing roped harpoons into the sides of enormous whales. In these scenes, the vessels and crews…
History
…were strongly influenced by the cultures of the Bolivian highlands. The most noticeable of these Altiplano features include their complex terraced farming and irrigation systems, the ceremonial chullpa, the settlement…
Hunters of the Megafauna
…The Americas were first populated near the end of the Pleistocene, when environmental conditions were completely different from those presently in force, as the continent was in a…
Arte
…substances, while with white combarbalita stone and copper ore they made bead necklaces. The Las Ánimas people were also skillful metallurgists, especially with copper, which they used to make a…
Economía
…The El Vergel people had a broad-based economy in which hunting and gathering on both land and water (rivers, lakes and sea) complemented their agricultural activities. They grew potatoes,…
Economy
…The economies of these communities were based on extensive agriculture and livestock raising, taking advantage of the water from ravines by building systems of terraced gardens and irrigation canals….
Art
These groups manufactured a variety of crafts in stone, wood, bone, textiles and metal, as well producing baskets, decorated gourds, bead necklaces of worked copper and toba stone….
Culto y Funebria
…While cemeteries in different valleys exhibit some major differences, the custom of burying dead individuals along with whole or partial guanaco cadavers was common, perhaps as a form of…