The Kawésqar were nomadic seafaring canoeists with a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. According to contemporary sources, their principal vessel was the tree-bark canoe (made preferably from coigüe wood), which was…
Economy
The Chonos belonged to the southern canoeist culture and were nomadic seafarers. Their vessels, called dalcas, were central to their way of life and were made of three…
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…
Settlement pattern
…preferably adjacent to the corresponding ahu. These settlements held a core group of dwellings that usually belonged to high-ranking clan members, while common folk lived in permanent settlements furtherinland, near…
Economy
…abounded in the region. When these animals beached themselves occasionally, the entire community took the opportunity to hold a lengthy celebration. The Selk’nam consumed virtually all bird species available, except…
History
…around 2000 BC, the Chinchorro began to blend with the Quiani groups, who simplified the previous complex mummification techniques as they inherited the culture and ancient traditions of the Chinchorro….
Environment and Location
The Chinchorro people inhabited the Pacific coast of southern Peru and northern Chile, from what the present-day port of Ilo to Antofagasta. Though the land here is extremely…
Environment and Location
The Arica culture inhabited a region known as the “Western Valleys,” which extended from Mollendo in Peru to Taltal in Chile, although most lived in the Azapa and…
History
Little is known about the origin of the Aconcagua culture, few elements of which can be ascribed to their predecessors, the Bato and Llolleo peoples, although neither is…
Indigenous Stories
…are passed down from generation to generation, transforming in details by maintaining the main argument of each story. Therefore it is common to have different versions of the same story….
Beliefs and funeral rites
…The Chinchorro culture offers the earliest complex expression of a cult of the dead and ancestor worship on the arid South American coast. This is seen through the complicated…
Art
…of the relief images. These pigments may have also been used from early times in body painting, a practice that was common at the time of first contact with Europeans….
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…
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…
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…
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 Sacrificer
…potatoes, the Sacrificer removed certain parts of the human body and planted them in the earth to release their power to renew not only crops but the community itself….
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…
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…