Pre-Colombian Period
Approximately 10,000 years BC hunter-gatherer societies existed near present-day Bogotá (at El Abra and Tequendama), and they traded with one another and with cultures living in the Magdalena River valley. Beginning in the first millennium AD, groups of Amerindians developed a political system, the cacicazgo, a pyramidal power structure headed by a cacique. Within Colombia, the two cultures with the most complex cacicazgo systems were the Tayronas in the Caribbean region, and the Muiscas in the highlands near Bogotá, both of which belonged to the Chibchan language family. The Muisca people had one of the most developed political systems in South America, surpassed only by the Incas.
Read more about this topic: History Of Colombia
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