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…
Economy
…birds at night, blinding them in their nests until they fell into the canoes, where they were knocked senseless. Chono women collected shellfish, both by hand from the seaside rocks…
Economy
…who hunted these camelids with bow and arrow and also with bolas. This activity was exclusive to the male members of the group, although both men and women fished and…
Historia
…which exhibited great social complexity. Although they were incorporated into the Inka Empire around the year 1400, it was the Spanish conquest that dealt a serious blow to the social…
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
…Bolivian Altiplano. When the Inka arrived in the 15th Century, the Aconcagua people adopted many cultural elements from both the Inka and the Diaguita, the latter being a culture from…
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….
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…
Art
…by both gender and social standing. In Kollasuyu, Inka textiles combined the esthetics of Tawantinsuyu with the traditional styles of the region. The same was true of ceramics, as local…
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…
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…
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…
Patrón de Asentamiento
…The early inhabitants of Patagonia were highly mobile and ranged freely over hundreds of kilometers, taking advantage of both the open woodland and the steppe environments. They returned time…
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…
Selk’nam
…The music of the Selk’nam people is essential vocal and includes both solo and choral singing, sometimes accompanied by simple instruments such as bird bone whistles and the percussive…
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 Spear-thrower
…both instruments in his hand then launch them forward, releasing the dart and holding on to the thrower. The thrower increased the force with which the dart could be thrown,…
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…