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Pre-Columbian Panama - Coggle Diagram
Pre-Columbian Panama
Cultural manifestations and social customs
Male power
There was a flexible cultural and political geography in which there were epicenters and peripheries, as well as production centers of different kinds of artifacts in each epicenter linked to trade routes whose size and permanence varied according to the economic, luxury or ideological value of the goods. that changed hands.
Artifacts and territories: a difficult matter to interpret
There is no evidence of wealthy women and children, suggesting that power was not hereditary and that politics was controlled by men who were constantly competing with each other.
Dominance, rivalry and territoriality
Some political territories extended from the coast to the mountains and occasionally from coast to coast, which facilitated the use of the resources of different ecological zones and of products that were not distributed equally along the isthmus.
The indigenous population along the Central American land bridge was gathered in small territories controlled by "caciques" and their entourages, who exercised a certain degree of power over the rest of the population.
Village life
The pottery art was greatly improved by the production of carefully finished and polished vessels.
Greater variety of stone utensils, which are related to changes in the intensity of food production and in the way of preparing the most important products.
The population began to gather in mountain valleys or along the larger rivers where they established nucleated villages in which houses were built that were occupied for several years, with wooden poles, thatch and straw roofs and clay floors.
Hunting, fishing and gathering
In places such as Cerro Mangote (5000-3000 BC), and Monagrillo (2400-1200 BC), located on the shores of the productive Bay of Parita, the importance of hunting deer, iguanas, raccoons and coastal birds has been verified through archaeozoological analysis. fishing in estuaries and sandy beaches and collecting shells and crabs.
They hunted, fished, and gathered shells, crabs, and wild fruits.
Farming
Archaeological and palaeoecological data indicate that the Cerro Punta and Volcán valleys were occupied from 800 BC. by farmers from the Pacific foothills of Costa Rica and Chiriquí who established the villages that would later be dominated by the great ceremonial center of Barriles.
The ancient Cana mine in eastern Darien showed that by 2000 BC this remote area was also inhabited by farmers who knew corn.
The varieties of plants that would have been grown in open gaps in the foothills near the 'stone houses' between 6000 and 1000 BC. They were not as productive, nor as adaptable, as those that the Spanish knew when they arrived in America.
Continual and increasingly intense deforestation shows that some people remained there burning the forest until, by 5000 BC, there were few trees left in the basin.
Colonization
Cave of Vampires: the results of excavations carried out in 2002 indicate that this rocky shelter was used as an occasional camp from 9,500 BC, initially by people of the 'Clovis' tradition and later by their successors.
In Panama, stone utensils from these so-called 'Paleoindian' traditions have been found in several sites, the ones that have provided the most accurate data are Lake Alajuela, La Mula-Oeste (Sarigua), Sitio Nieto (Llano Grande de Ocú). and the Cave of the Vampires.
Depopulation
The largest populations and the most complex societies were found near the coasts or in fertile valleys.
Various populations died from hard work with the Spanish.
Ceremonial centers
Sitio Conte and Cerro Cerrezuela there is evidence of stone-lined terraces and El Caño Archaeological Park, whose arrangements of carved and uncarved basalt columns are well known suggests that these three sites together performed the function of a site of special ritual and social importance.
Sitio Barriles stands out as a ceremonial center that transcended a much wider territory than that of a single "lordship" or "chiefdom".
The care of the ancestors
The funeral rites of the ancestors and the effort made to preserve their physical remains through embalming, drying and resting in mortuary houses.
In Sitio Conte as in Cerro Juan Díaz the burial vaults were kept open, covered with roofs and sheets of bark cloth in order to receive the dead of a single family for several generations.
Prehistoric stages
Hunting, gathering and fishing (10,000 to 3,000 BC). Man lived as a nomad and depended on the fruits that he could gather from wild plants, from fishing, from the shells and mammals that he could hunt.
Formative agriculture (3,000 to 1,500 BC). The man continues the evolution of him and passes to an agriculture of tubers.
Established agriculture (1,500 to 300 BC): According to the author, at this time there is undoubted intensive corn agriculture in Panama (main crop), associated with common bean crops and probably avocado.
Extensive agriculture (300 BC until the Conquest). This stage coincides with the arrival of the Spanish conquerors. Panamanian men occupied large organized rural agricultural villages, which had a high population density.
Aboriginal groups present on the Isthmus
The first evidence of human groups in Panama dates back to approximately 11,000 years.
Classic stone tools have been found from this period, such as spear points, scrapers, knives for killing, skinning and butchering extinct mammals.
Five -bribris (immigrants during the 20th century), ngöbés (guaymíes, "moveres"), buglés, ("bokotás", "sabaneros"), tiribies ("teribes / térrabas"), and tules ("kuna"), speak languages that belong to the Chibchense lineage of the Paya-Chibcha edge.
The extermination to which the population that occupied the Bayano and Darién region is subjected, allows that during the 16th century this area was occupied by the Kuna culture and much later, from the 18th century onwards, by the Chocoe culture, of the language Emberá and Waunana, the latter, come from the Urabá and Chocó regions.
Location and geographical conditions
The first inhabitants settled on the Panamanian isthmus approximately 11,000 years ago.
Stone tools such as projectiles (spear points), knives, scrapers, etc., have been found that have been located in the Lake.